Sleepers

One of my earliest poems, Sleepers was, I seem to recall, first published in the Times Literary Supplement. It later appeared in my first poetry collection (1997) with Bloodaxe (now revised and available in a new, digital form on Kindle).

Sleepers

Under the green skirt of the sycamore
we kissed, or loved in other ways.
We asked no questions, had no need.

The sky was china-blue, like all the summers
of our youth: cloudless, undemanding.
We came to love too easily those days,

not thunder-struck or lightning-shot
but something underwritten, guaranteed.
A contract we agreed indulgently

like pouring double cream on strawberries
or shutting out the night-cry with the cat
as if some simple act could silence it.

That piercing cat-call should have woken us.
We walked those years like sleepers do,
sensing blindly where our feet should fall.

The shanty house we built out on the branch;
wild blossom thrown like rice at other kids;
your father’s voice; late sunlight on a pool:

these carried us through years of innocence
and into times that took us by surprise,
too rough to measure on our little scale.

You can still find details of my first collection with Bloodaxe Books here, though it is now out of print.

"How Potatoes Saved The Queen" launches for World Book Day

I'm utterly delighted to announce the launch of my youngest daughter's first publication, an e-book for Amazon Kindle entitled "How Potatoes Saved the Queen".

It's a short collection of Tudor tales for children, based around the fictional character of Potatoes, a rascally Irish wolfhound who has the distinction of being Sir Walter Raleigh's dog.

"The Amazing Adventures of Potatoes, the Tudor dog!"

Potatoes is Sir Walter Raleigh's dog, who named him after his greatest discovery - the potato!

Potatoes is a friendly rascal. But he is also a very brave dog. He has many daring adventures, often saving Sir Walter Raleigh and Queen Elizabeth from certain death.

You can find out about Potatoes' adventures in this short collection of seven easy-to-read exciting stories for younger readers under 10 - and older readers who might like an alternative view of Tudor history.

The author is 8 years old. In 2011, she was the youngest winner of 'The Tick-Tock Box', a national short story competition at The Guardian newspaper judged by Francesca Simon, author of the Horrid Henry books. This is Indigo Haynes' first publication. She is currently writing a fantasy adventure novel for children.

I can verify that Indigo wrote all these stories herself, mostly last year when she was seven years old, plus some other animal stories which are being saved for a later collection. I typed them up and acted as her editor, correcting her spelling and occasional infelicitous sentence structure. Though I have to admit, some particularly amusing word inventions have been left to stand - 'dignant', for instance.

Indigo now considers herself a published author, and is already planning how to spend her royalties. The collection is priced 77p in the UK, and I'm sure would appeal to most young readers. And a few grown-up ones too!

US readers can find "How Potatoes Saved the Queen" here on Amazon Kindle.
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A Lonesome Place on Bodmin Moor

Some of my readers will know that we have been living in the English Midlands since 2003, having moved there from Cornwall when my husband changed his job.

Our latest news is that we are moving back to Cornwall next month. We've found a lovely and very ancient farmhouse to rent, whose earliest recorded incarnation seems to date back to the early sixteenth century, and intend to live there for the foreseeable future. It's on the desolate fringes of Bodmin Moor, with moor ponies and hardy-looking sheep grazing all around us, but not too far from village life if we get lonely. The children went to see it over the weekend, and have fallen in love with the place.

We move late next month. Raw Light will continue as usual - with sporadic but hopefully interesting posts on writing and the writer's life - as soon as we have some kind of broadband connection going.

And in the midst of packing cases and general chaos, I have a major book launch still to come this week. Watch this space for details!

RNA Blog Interview

I've been interviewed today on the Romantic Novelists Association blog, largely about my forthcoming novel The Queen's Secret - published under the pseudonym Victoria Lamb - and my working methods as a novelist.

Might be interesting if you're into fiction writing.

Epicentre - a new literary ezine

Jane in editorial mode

I am now editing Epicentre, a brand-new literary ezine - based geographically in the English Midlands but publishing internationally - with an emphasis on new poetry.

I intend to launch the first issue in April, and afterwards focus on rolling content rather than publishing new issues at set intervals. This seems to work well for literary ezines, such as the excellent Stride, which is updated according to the editor's whim. It also means I won't feel bound to any particular schedule but can edit the magazine and monitor the inbox when I have the time.

So if you've emailed work or a query, and not yet heard back, don't panic. I'll get round to everyone in the end. Though once it's more than 4-6 weeks, feel free to nudge me, in case your email went astray.

If you wish to send a contribution, please read and follow the submission guidelines, if only to avoid annoying me before I even open your email. Seriously. It's amazing how few people take the time to follow magazine submission guidelines, yet still expect the editor to read their work at the other end in a generous and professional spirit.

Though of course I always do.  Because I'm such a liar nice person.

By the way, there is another Epicentre magazine. Though being American they are EpicentER whereas we are EpicentRE. A small distinction but an important one. Not least because you'll be sending your work to the wrong place if you don't check you're at the right site.

Psychicbread Tour Dates

 

Received these tour dates today and thought I would kick off my 2012 blog posts with some promo for Mark Gwynne Jones and Psychicbread, a live poetry-music act I have had the joy and delight to see several times, and can heartily recommend to anyone with a developed sense of humour and a liking for the zany.

Dear Shimmering Mountain

Here are shows to bedazzle and delight in Derby, Nottingham, Manchester, Loughborough and London. Featuring such new creations as The Devil's Arse (the illusory nature of the world, as revealed by the world's greatest illusionist). Hope to see you somewhere. Thanks,

Mark Gwynne Jones

 

Nottingham - Wednesday 18^th Jan - Guest at Speakasy (an openfloor poetry night)

The Alley Cafe Bar, Cannon Court, Longrow West, NG1 6JE  8.30pm

London – Thursday 19^th Jan – Guest at BANG SAID THE GUN

The Roebuck, 50 Great Dover Street, SE1, Show 8pm £5 door

Manchester – Friday 27^th Jan – Mark Gwynne Jones delivers a Beat the Rush Hour Show

John Thaw Studio Theatre, Martin Harris Centre, The University of Manchester, Show 5.30 – 6.30 Tickets £5 - Tel: 0161 275 8951

Loughborough – Monday 5^th March – Guest at new open mic Speech Bubble

Students Union, Loughborough University, Doors 7pm, Tel: 01509 222 881

London – Sunday 11^th March - Guest at the Jazz Verse Jukebox

Ronnie Scott’s, 47 Frith Street, Soho, W1D 4HT, Doors 6.30, Show 8pm, £7 Door

London – Friday 23^rd March – Guest at The Poetry Café’s Fourth Friday (An evening of poetry and music, booked artists and voices from the floor)

20 Betterton Street, Covent Gardens, WC2H 98X, Tel: 020 7420 9887

Derby – Saturday 28^th April – The QUAD

Market Place, Cathedral Quarter, DE1 3AS, Tel:  01332 285 444

Mark Burnhope: The Snowboy

In October, I attended a poetry reading in Oxford where various Salteenies were reading (poets published by Salt) and one of the new books of poetry I picked up that night was by one of the readers, Mark Burnhope.

His first pamphlet, The Snowboy, published this year, is priced at £6.50 - which I found rather steep for a pamphlet of 28 pages. (Luckily, he offered me a small discount when I made my sad spaniel face.) But the quality of Burnhope's poetry is also steep, which made up for the high price. (I also notice it is currently reduced to £5.20 on the Salt website, which is more realistic from a buyer's point of view.)

Burnhope's work is an odd but dynamic combination of mythic or lyrical influences and sudden flat prosaic touches. He is not afraid to declaim or strike postures, which is something I thought had died out with the last of the Romantics, suggesting a return to that contradictory attitude of self-conscious looking outwards which is somehow embarrassing and yet satisfying to encounter. It's an attitude which says to the listener or reader, at least on a subliminal level: 'I am a Poet and this is Poetry with a capital P, yet I am perfectly well aware of what's being written today, thank you, as well as what was written three hundred years ago.'

Being wheelchair-bound, Mark Burnhope's poetry gives us an unusual perspective on life, of seeing things that perhaps others miss, and also an awareness of his own peculiarly stand-out - perhaps even combative? - spatial relationship with the world. One of the most compelling poems in the book is his bold 'Wheelchair, Recast as a Site of Special Pastoral Interest':

O evil scaffold, levelled
             and controlled by spirit.
O wing-black spectral-silver mass;
crass imposition upon the meadow
formed of iron-carbon alloy - steel -
and foam; O folk dance of spoke,
            wheel, tyre, seat, the latter
            to which, flush out of the field,
            the executed calf
                        and ewe contributed.

Here the hard, metallic, man-made structure of the wheelchair is placed in creative tension with the softer, ever-changing elements of the natural world, i.e. the 'meadow' (not a field, please note, which would be agricultural and therefore equally manmade) and the 'calf and ewe' (here, definitely from the 'field'). The 'folk dance' works beautifully with that idea of a pre-industrial world, a celebration of life and death, the 'executed calf' recalling the prodigal son's return, the forgiveness of the father for his wayward child.

And you also catch the most vital element of Burnhope's writing here, which is predominantly aural, focused on how the sounds strike the ear and play against each other. 'O, O, O,' this poem says. An exclamation, a sound of distress, an invocation on a stage. The wheel revolving. That final 'meadow' both prepares for and sparks off 'O folk dance of spoke'. Bach makes it into the final lines, 'bounding over the vales', as though the wheelchair had been constructed by music, or to music, so that music was somehow inherent in its structure, with 'vales' in the last line suggesting tears.


So the poet's love-hate relationship with his wheelchair does not so much dominate this book as underscore it musically. In a dream where he is imagined without it, Burnhope writes with grim humour:

In the absence of a wheelchair, I am walking
on one paw like a cirque-du-freak performer.

This seems to suggest that he sees the wheelchair as almost a normalising influence, a damping-down of creative energy, where its absence might allow him to become a daring 'performer', albeit one whose differentness is what people primarily flock to see, that 'paw' in place of a hand bringing an animalistic touch to the image. Burnhope's wild side? He then sees himself morphing into a scorpion that stings itself to death, perhaps through too much introspection. Other poems here mention sperm whales, Moby Dick, tentacles, skate, a cormorant ... Burnhope's touchstone is the sea, and it is a recurring image in this debut, as are those creatures which live within it.

Also a Christian, much of the imagery here finds its influence in the Christian religion, though with a certain dark pagan twist at times. (O folk dance ... ) I tend to dislike contemporary religious verse with extreme vehemence, though it's hard not to admire the sparing delicacy and slate-sharp edges of a poet like R.S. Thomas. It's also hard not to see that - very pleasing - influence at work here in Burnhope's debut:

Boscombe Pier pierces

the sea. On either side of me
the promenade extends

arms that end
in bending wrists of cliff-side.

The land is dark, but look, his fists
pin-lit,

loosing breakers overnight.

I want to ask Burnhope what 'pin-lit' means here - Christ's stigmata, one assumes, doubling up with the pinpoints of penny arcade or promenade lights - where or indeed what is the main verb, and how dare he casually toss the trauma of 'extends/ends/bending' into three consecutive lines and leave us to wrestle with that oblique, not quite understandable finale while we are still reeling from all those vibrating 'end' sounds? Meanwhile, this rather fine and striking piece of Christian imagery is a direct rebuttal to the prosaic opening to this poem, 'Christ is not your friend our lecturer said.'

Frankly, yes, wrong in places. But I love it. Not the opening though. I would say here, have the courage to back away from the inspiration for this poem, which adds nothing, and perhaps even detracts from or diminishes what follows it, and develop the lyric impulse instead. That's where the true power lies. Not in what we perceive as 'truth' (like those poor souls at open mic nights who say of their poems, as if to reassure us that it's not mere flim-flam, 'This really happened', not knowing that they are robbing their work of any possible power it might have possessed to ferry us into the magic territory of the 'story', as opposed to the stifling airing cupboard of the anecdote) but in the purely imaginary, the vital thought or image which creates its own reality as we attempt to capture it in a poem.

Though perhaps the prosaic is what anchors the poetry for Burnhope, gives the more powerful imagery  an excuse to exist without sounding like 'Art for Art's sake'. Well, I can see how that might happen. But we don't always need to see the working out. Sometimes the solution is better presented naked and shorn of its original props.

What else? Assonance and alliteration like an insane rash. Yes, yes, yes. Let's get back to that in poetry. An odd and discordant use of verbs, or nouns that double up as verbs, or possibly do, so that the poem is constantly wrongfooting the listener, i.e. 'Where the one/we conceived on Christmas Eve/ pools, swaddles grass'. I mean, just read that first clause again. What the... ?

But again, I welcome it. Somewhere beneath the slightly tyro feel to these pieces is my kind of poetry. It's not boring. It has the ability to slap you in the face without being unsubtle about such a gesture. It possesses oddly beautiful and powerful imagery. It hints at dark undercurrents which I would love to see coming to the fore. And above all, it is Poetry, and is unafraid of that concept.

I'm very rarely excited and interested by new books of poetry, being a curmudgeonly sort. But there's something in Burnhope's debut which makes me hope he isn't easily satisfied by what he's got here. Because if he is, he will have thrown away his chance to be a truly excellent poet.

Help to encourage a new poet. Grab a copy of Mark Burnhope's The Snowboy from Salt Publishing or Amazon.

Extracts from "Gawain" at Horizon Review

I realised just now, when posting up my comments on Christopher Logue's death, that I had completely forgotten to flag up my extracts from "Gawain" that appeared at Horizon Review a few months back.

Anyway, the extracts may be worth reading if you're into that kind of thing, i.e. free translations or versions of Middle English poetry. It's a version of "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", of course, but I've just called it "Gawain", as the former is a bit of a mouthful.

I haven't finished it yet. I may never finish it at this rate, with all the other demands on my time and the need to earn a living. But what's been done so far is not too dreadful. In certain places.

Here's a mini-extract of the extracts on Horizon Review. As a teaser to encourage you to click the link.

Oblivious to the hounds circling upwind and panting, muscular, rump
         to shoulder, eager for the chase,
the fox himself stands watchful at the edge of a clearing, surveying
stiff grass, ice-locked.
Frost clings raw to the iron-clad earth. The sun rises, ruddied
against the cloud rack, a red eye
utterly cried-out
that morning, scouring the welkyn, shuffling the sky’s massive drift
for signs of fox.
One whiff and he’s off. Helter-skelter, criss-crossing wet fields
and muddied tracks. The hounds
fly after him, their hard-baying tongues heard as far away
as Hautdesert. There, her white throat bare,
the lady is entering Gawain’s bedchamber. Tiny bright stones,
         exquisitely-cut, hang in her hair.
Both her back and her breasts are smooth and exposed: gorgeous,
light-footed, she comes to his bed
in a robe trimmed with fur, laughing and calling
         his name.
Gawain wakes, dazzled. With answering laughter, he lays aside
         all her kisses and hot protestations
of love. Again
she comes at him. “Take this ring,” she whispers. When he refuses,
         she unhooks a belt from her waist,
green and gold, hung with tassels and pendants, a rich girdle,
and urges him to accept it, bending her face to his: “A poor gift,
unless you wish to save a man from death.”
Horns blow, out on the reed-edged marsh. The fox doubles back
too late; the hounds have found his scent.
They fall on him, and he is rent, flayed by furious teeth and claws,
         bloodied, a trophy.

Christopher Logue departs for the shades

Sad to see that Christopher Logue has died at the age of 85, a poet and playwright whose visceral and blithely free translation of Homer, "War Music", had a profound influence on my own poetry.


In the Fifties, Logue also wrote a pornographic novel called "Lust" for the infamous Olympia Press in Paris, under the ironic pen-name Count Palmiro Vicarion. That alone would have made him a friend, but his "War Music" is such a towering achievement, I cannot imagine any poet of feeling being able to read it and not wish they had written the thing.

Christopher Logue won the Whitbread in 2005 for "Cold Calls", a continuation of his Homeric work. But it's "War Music" for which I will remember him. And the fact that, apart from that belated award towards the end of his life, his talent as a poet was almost never recognised by that shadowy institution, the Establishment. Thus the life of a maverick ends.

Picture the east Aegean sea by night,
And on a beach aslant its shimmering
Upwards of 50,000 men
Asleep like spoons beside their lethal Fleet ...

Buy "War Music" from Amazon UK.

"Disreputable" launches as an ebook!

Browse this book on Amazon UK

I have just revised and launched the Kindle edition - also available to read on computers and smart phones - of my debut poetry collection (Bloodaxe Books, 1997), currently priced at only £2.14.

Originally published together under the title 'The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman', some of these tender young poems also appeared in: Blade, The Guardian, Iron, London Magazine, The Mail on Sunday, Making for Planet Alice (Bloodaxe Books, 1997), Oasis, PN Review, Poetry Review, Snooker Scene and The Times Literary Supplement.

Retitled "Disreputable", this collection is published here for the first time in digital form with some alterations of individual poems and a minor reshuffle of the order. I've even slung a few poems out that were either embarrassing, never really worked, or were just filler and didn't earn their place in the book. In these poems, English lyricism meets snooker exposé, the longer narrative form is explored, poetic influences are mocked and celebrated. The book holds something for everyone, in other words, and is unusual among debut collections in its experimental variety of form and subject matter.

'Jane Holland uses language both as a weapon and as a shield. This is an intelligent book, knife-sharp at moments, tender and gentle at others' - Brendan Kennelly.

'Poetically she puts the balls down with an elan rare in new poets' - Peter Forbes, The Guardian.

I originally wrote "Disreputable" back in the mid-Nineties, staggering about with all my influences on my back. It's the usual raw magic and intestines of a young poet's debut. But some of the poems here won me an Eric Gregory Award in 1996, and it's great value at £2.14.

Hope you feel able to grab a copy - bearing in mind that you don't need a Kindle to read an Amazon ebook; just go to the Amazon page and follow the sidebar instructions to download FREE software for reading Kindle books on your computer, phone or other devices.

Happy browsing!

And if you're based in the US or thereabouts, here's the link to "Disreputable" on Amazon.com.

Robert McKee: 'Thou Shalt Rewrite"

About twenty years ago, perhaps even longer, but certainly when I was a mere whipper-snapper and unpublished to boot, I watched a television documentary about a great American screenwriting guru who had come to London to dispense his wisdom to the great and good of the British film industry. For years later, the top British film writers, producers and directors were all going about checking their film scripts for 'writing on the nose' or  carefully 'putting a subtext under every text' and 'seeking the end of the line'.

That guru was Robert McKee, who even managed to make it into a film as himself (Adaptation), and this November he's back in London.

So for the first time in my life, I will finally get to sit through Bob McKee's gruelling but apparently awe-inspiring four day seminar on the art and secrets of screenwriting.

Yes, I know I'm a poet and a novelist, but almost everything I know about the structure of the novel has been learnt through studying films and reading books on film structure. The skills required for the screen are perfectly transferable to novel-writing.

Besides which, I still harbour dreams of writing for the screen one day.

And the day before the McKee seminar starts, I'll be having lunch with my lovely new editors at Random House Children's Books and discussing how the rest of my Witchstruck! series is shaping up. Which is just a fantastic day to look forward to. 

Another busy week in the life ...

Meanwhile, why not entertain yourself with some of Robert McKee's Commandments for writers?

Launch of 'The Wanderer' on Kindle

Available now on Kindle

I finally uploaded my single poem-version of 'The Lament of the Wanderer' to Kindle tonight, after months of dithering over whether I should augment it with other poems in the same vein.

In the end, I've just gone with the one poem, my translation of the haunting Anglo-Saxon poem, 'The Wanderer', plus the original introduction, with some changes, that was featured in the Heaventree Press edition in 2008. It's not very long as ebooks go, somewhere around 10 pages, but since the only reason I can imagine people wanting to download it would be to see an alternative version of the poem for academic reasons, it shouldn't really matter that it's so short.

It's possible that I may do a longer version, containing some other AS translations, but I'll have to make a few enquiries about that first, as all the poems concerned were originally published elsewhere.

My thanks go to Jon Morley, my editor at the Coventry-based Heaventree Press, who encouraged me to prepare the poem and its introduction for publication in 2008.

My 'lost' poem sequence, 'Umbra'

Continuing my series of Sixth Birthday Celebration repeated blog posts from Raw Light's past, this post on my lost poem sequence, 'Umbra', is from January 2006.

One of the problems of working on computers is the thorny issue of when to back up, and what happens when you don't. I am extremely lax about backing up and have paid the price. Hundreds of my poems written between 1997 - 2004 are lost in the belly of the beast - i.e. inside one of my dead computers - and I have no idea how to access them and no funds available to engage the services of an expert on information retrieval.

One of the major victims is my long verse sequence UMBRA - later developed into a play for voices which was performed at Brasenose College, Oxford - of which only four poems still exist from about 40 in the original sequence. The rest are trapped inside a now defunct laptop which I was using while at Oxford. Having moved house five times since 1998, I have also managed to become separated from the paper copies of my older poems - where they existed at all. So unless they come to light at some point in the future, UMBRA is no more. No great loss, perhaps, to the literary world. But a part of my past which I would rather still have access to, if only for the pleasure of it.

So today I thought I'd post up a poem from UMBRA, and maybe the others that I have, slowly, in the coming days, to give them a little airing. They are certainly among the oddest poems I have ever written but they do deserve to be seen, I think. Indeed, the only reason I have these four poems at all is that they were published in the poetry magazine ‘Brando's Hat’ back in 1998, I think, and can be found at the Poetry Library website where they provide back issues of poetry magazines online. The rest are lost, probably forever.

UMBRA is a story told in poems - rather than a 'verse novel' - a storyline or theme developed through a sequence of poems.

The title character, Umbra, is a young woman who believes herself to be the reincarnation of Barton's wife, and feels drawn to take her place in his life. His daughter, Stella, feels threatened by Umbra whom she suspects of superseding her in her father's affections. Barton, who may or may not have murdered his wife, is both excited and disturbed by Umbra's sudden appearance. The sequence darts between the three voices, sometimes explorative, sometimes lyrical, often violent.

If there is a clear-cut theme in UMBRA - though I dislike having to discuss theme, which can be such a slippery thing for a writer - it's probably something to do with mental breakdown, with the odd disturbing shifts in personality that happen at that time, the inability to see oneself clearly, or as others see you, and the constant suspicion that your entire environment is somehow 'against' you, in a very real and threatening way.

This poem, 'Heaven to be out there, under', comes midway through the sequence and is unusual because it is written from the dead wife's point of view. She wants to communicate with her husband, to describe the experience of being dead, I suppose, but since the poem is told through Umbra's voice, it may not be entirely trustworthy. Umbra has begun to learn about and identify with the dead woman to such an extent that the boundaries between them begin to shift and blur from this point. Is she really the reincarnation of Barton's wife, possessing a direct mental link to the secrets and tragedies of his past, or is she simply mad?



Heaven, to be out there, under

she might have told him,
not rolling, but holding, taking

the thunder, a wild bird
into shelter, dredging the surf

of the storm, shimmying.
Hell, to be in here, realised,

torn to a stand, stripped
of these leaves, these coverings.

A cold hand summons the star.
Warm breath mists the mirror,

repeating the winter,
the dead season, where I

reel from the whirlpool,
the sucking in, the bright mote.


N.B. This is the first - and only - poem in which I have used the word 'mote' (speck of dust) more commonly associated with poor imitations of nineteenth century verse. Personally, my eyebrows shoot up whenever I encounter it in contemporary poetry, yet here it seems natural. To me, that is. You may disagree.

On Angels and Muscular Poetry

Continuing my series of Sixth Birthday Celebration repeated blog posts from Raw Light's past, this odd little post is from Christmas 2005:

Several days have passed since I last updated my blog ... and no surprise there, with Christmas-a-coming and five kids in the house!

I was also struck down by one of these mystery bugs over the weekend and ended up sweating it out under a duvet on the sofa. Shades of being ten years old again and being allowed to watch telly for hours. Except now it’s the DVD collection of ANGEL I’m watching.

I only discovered BUFFY a couple of years back, having married a serious sci-fi/fantasy/horror fan, and now I have the pleasure of steadily watching my way through both BUFFY and ANGEL on DVD, courtesy of the incredibly good value home rental system on amazon. I find both highly entertaining. Especially when laid low and in desperate need of some eye-candy, as the Americans would put it. I’m referring, of course, to the sultry David Boreanaz, who plays Angel, the vampire with a soul.

So, I did my Fourcast reading at the Poetry Cafe last week and it went very well. I was nervous up until the last minute, then found it easy to slide back into performance mode. The poems I read were all new, i.e. uncollected, and some were so new they haven’t yet found their way into any magazines. I was very impressed by Martina Evans, Kevin Higgins and Jacob Sam-La Rose, the other poets reading with me that night, and it was good to see Roddy Lumsden again, who was hosting the event.


Jacob Sam-La Rose

My thanks to my husband Steve, who stoutly accompanied me down to London even though it meant he didn’t get to bed until nearly 3am and then had to get up for work again at 7am, and to my oldest and dearest friend Judy Ewart, who bought my train ticket, bless her, sat through the reading and then did something almost unheard-of at such events, and actually bought books by the other poets there. With hard cash!


Martina Evans and Kevin Higgins (first from the left)

Yes, it was an enjoyable and fruitful evening; I’ve found that reading poems to an audience is essential for testing them on the air. Otherwise you’re only hearing the poems inside the space of your own head, or as a private exchange between yourself and maybe your partner or husband or cat, whoever happens to be listening when you first try them aloud, and it can be harder to spot glitches in the rhythm or words which don’t fit as perfectly as they should. So it was a useful exercise and I did take away some thoughts on possible structural changes to the more recent poems. I also noted which poems seemed to ‘grip’ the audience more than others.

To my mind, no sin in a writer is greater than that of boring the reader or listener. So it’s a relief to find a poem within your repertoire that, like a good and trusted friend, can be relied upon in almost all circumstances: a muscular poem with broad shoulders and, even better, deep pockets.

The Death Instinct: from November 2005

Continuing my reposting of old blog posts to celebrate six years of blogging here on Raw light, this poem-post comes from November 2005:

When I first started this blog, I thought it would be nice to post up some poems from time to time, but never really got around to managing that. But being deeply involved with a new novel at the moment, it seems a quick way of keeping the blog active without having to bare my soul online.

This isn't a new poem but it is one of my personal favourites. I wrote THANATOS in about 1998; it was published a year or so later in PN Review, an intelligent poetry magazine edited by Michael Schmidt of Carcanet Press (PN stands for Poetry Nation). Since my second collection is still forthcoming, it has not yet been published in book form.

[This poem appears in 'Boudicca & Co.' now available in paperback or Kindle edition. Jane]

It's never easy for a poet to 'explain' a poem they have written, but THANATOS, I suppose, is a poem which likens love to being caught in a cyclone. It's quite different from the poems in my first collection, most notably in terms of form; I'd been reading some of Ted Hughes' later work when I wrote this - his BIRTHDAY LETTERS, in particular - and I was rather taken with the prosiness (which I'm not convinced is a real word) and dramatic tone of that collection.

Thanatos comes from the Greek for death. I think it means something like 'death-instinct' - at least, that's what I took it to mean at the time I wrote this poem. Later, I agreed to medication and am no longer driven to write this sort of grim, self-involved poetry. I'm not sure if that's entirely a good thing. I prefer compulsive poetry to light anecdotal verse, and it's quite hard to write poetry of a compulsive nature when everything's sunny in your life and you're not struggling with some terrible inner demon. Though I imagine there are many poets out there who would - and probably will - disagree with that particular generalisation. Fortunately, I don't care.


THANATOS

Schoolgirl vulnerable, still smarting from
the fumbled mismatch of a love affair, I fell
straight out of space and into hell
that night. He was only a voice
on the edge of nothing, but I kept returning
to him, flickering like a stilled film
against the mindless black ferocity of wind.
The roof was trying to suck me out, vast mouth
clamped like a mad baby’s over the breast
of a house, whining for milk. I wanted
then to loose my hold, know how it feels
to spiral in the infinite, to Catherine-wheel
across the space that once was love.
Thanatos, pricking at my blood: the truth
that I came searching for, a weariness
that threatened to unclasp my hand, saying
it’s over, all over, why resist?
But at the other end of light, the funnelled dark
was a dead body I clung to out of
sheer stubbornness.

And the black wind
could not dislodge me from my welding-place,
though its eye bent in and saw me there,
plucked at my white knuckles, severed
the electric umbilical of light. I took
that place and hid it underneath the other times,
less brutal, more arranged. But it comes back,
obliterates that flash between dark and dawn,
and I pretend not to recognise it; call it
desire for solitude. Expurgate, disown the truth.

Reading Thomas Wyatt: a post from October 2005

Continuing in my series of Sixth Birthday Celebration Repeat Postings, here is a post which has proved consistently popular with browsers since it first appeared on October 3rd, 2005. Seems there are quite a few Wyatt fans out there ...

A Tudor moment, with a glance at Whoso list to hunt (whoever chooses to hunt). This sonnet by Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542) is a personal favourite of mine. It's a loose translation of Petrarch but entirely Wyatt's own, possibly written about a clandestine affair he's reputed to have had with Anne Boleyn, speaking across the centuries of frustrated love, impossible love, love at a distance.

A hind, of course, is a female deer.


Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,
But as for me, alas, I may no more.
The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,
I am of them that farthest cometh behind,
Yet may I by no means my wearied mind
Draw from the deer, but as she fleeth afore
Fainting I follow. I leave off therefore
Since in a net I seek to hold the wind.
Who list to hunt, I put him out of doubt,
As well as I may spend his time in vain,
And graven with diamonds in letters plain
There is written her fair neck round about:
Noli me tangere for Caesar's I am,
And wild for to hold though I seem tame.


Noli me tangere = Do not touch me (poachers of the king's deer could expect the death penalty - as could poachers of the king's wife!)


This modern version of Whoso list to hunt comes from Hardiman Scott's edition of Wyatt's Selected Poems, which is published by Carcanet Press. Here's the back cover copy for those who'd like to know more.

Sir Thomas Wyatt (1503-1542), 'the first great English lyric poet', remains one of the most popular writers of Henry VIII's court, and perhaps the most romantic, given his entanglement with Anne Boleyn, which resulted - legend has it - in some of his most passionate and vulnerable poems. This book contains a representative selection of the work: all the best-loved poems and many lesser-known pieces which illuminate a complex and sophisticated sensibility. Hardiman Scott sees Wyatt as a modern poet before his time and demonstrates the impact he and his younger contemporary the Earl of Surrey had on the development of English poetry. Wyatt introduced the sonnet, terza rima and other Italian verse forms into English, and invented forms and processes of his own.

For those trying to remember the other much-anthologised poem by Wyatt, try this link to an online copy of his superb 'They flee from me that sometime did me seek'. More on Wyatt on this blog too, in an October 2007 entry.

My first ever post on Raw Light: from September 2005

"For though my ryme be ragged,
Tattered and jagged,
Rudely rayne beaten,
Rusty and moughte eaten,
It hath in it some pyth."

I recently discovered a poetry performance venue in Coventry, called Night Blue Fruit and hosted by the Heaventree Press. It's essentially an open mic evening at the Tin Angel - a small and intimate bar on Medieval Spon Street in old Coventry - and something about the night's atmosphere kicked me back into revisiting John Skelton's work, who was a self-styled poet laureate back in the days of Henry VIII. I was thinking of one of his poems in particular, the gloriously scurrilous and jaunty Elinour Rumming, a poem of some 620 short lines dealing with the landlady and clientele of a disreputable Tudor ale house.

All through the evening at Night Blue Fruit, through the windows of the Tin Angel, we could see girls in high heels, short skirts, low-cut tops etc., out on the razzle, some of them drunk, others grazing on chips and kebabs in between night clubs. They would yell at each other, laugh as they staggered across the road for a taxi, while inside the Tin Angel the poetry continued to flow. By the time I got home there was a long poem brewing away inside me, a modern-day Elinour Rumming about poets and drunken girls and the English language ... though, of course, these things never work out the way you envisage them.

I sat up well into the early hours to finish it; a dangerous policy when you've had a few drinks. [This poem, 'Night Blue Fruit at the Tin Angel', was later a Guardian Poem of the Week - it attracted so many astonishing comments, the comments thread had to be closed after only a few days. You can read the properly formatted and finished version in Boudicca & Co. currently on Kindle promo for 86p! Jane]

But the poem was still halfway decent in the morning, which is a good sign that you haven't entirely wasted your time. I've tinkered with it since, cut some sections which weren't working, and inserted some additional sections which came into my head later. Naturally, it's a performance piece rather than what some might call a traditional poem. But would Skelton have considered that there was a difference between the two?

Over the centuries, many critics have dismissed poems like Elinour Rumming as not lyrical enough to be taken seriously or accepted into the mainstream. But I think their energy and the dynamic challenges such poems pose to the English language more than make up for a lack of formalism. That's what Skelton was about, after all; keeping English on its toes, constantly shocking and surprising us with what it can do when stretched and subverted. Some of his work is so modern, experimental and tongue-in-cheek that it's difficult to remember it was written in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century.

Here's the beginning of Skelton's famous satirical epic Phyllyp Sparowe, parodying the Offices for the Dead:


Pla ce bo,
Who is there, who?
Di le xi,
Dame Margery;
Fa, re, my, my,
Wherfore and why, why?
For the sowle of Philip Sparowe,
That was late slayn at Carowe,
Among the Nones Blake,
For that swete soules sake,
And for all sparowes soules,
Set in our bedrolles,
Pater noster qui,
With an Ave Mari,
And with the corner of a Crede,
The more shallbe your mede.

Whan I remember agayn
How mi Philyp was slayn,
Never half the payne
Was betwene you twayne,
Pyramus and Thesbe,
As than befell to me:
I wept and I wayled,
The tears downe hayled;
But nothing it avayled
To call Phylyp agayne,
Whom Gyb our cat hath slayne ...

This post was the first I ever wrote on Raw Light, back in September 2005. I shall be reposting old blog posts - my favourites, or those of interest - from previous years over the next week or so. Hope you enjoy them. Some of you may even have been there to see their original posting! Jx

HAPPY BIRTHDAY RAW LIGHT!

 

This writing blog, Raw Light, is SIX YEARS OLD this month!

Amazing to think how many years it's been going strong. Yet I still haven't got bored and stopped posting. That's impressive for me. Looking back at my posting record, there have been a few dry patches here and there, but I always picked up the slack in the end.

So please wish Raw Light a Happy Birthday, and tweet it Happy Birthday too if the spirit moves you to gain me new followers!

In celebration of six successful years of blogging, I'm going to repost some favourite or significant blog posts from each year over the next few weeks. I'll put the original date in brackets alongside the title, and at the top of the post too, so hopefully people will understand it's a repeat.

 Just a trip down memory lane for me, and perhaps for those who have been faithfully following this blog since its first inane flutters of life, back in September 2005.

The tag for old posts will be #RawLightRepeats

Many thanks to ALL my readers, past and present, and to those who are now Following Raw Light.

Couldn't have done it without you! Jane x

Boudicca & Co relaunches as Kindle edition for just 86p!

'I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.' Helena Nelson, Ambit magazine

Glorious news! 

My second poetry collection, Boudicca & Co, has been launched by Salt Publishing today in a Kindle edition. You don't need a Kindle ereader to buy it, you can download free software from that page for computer or laptop, Mac or PC, and read it on your normal screen.


The paperback is 9.99. The Kindle edition is only 0.86p!


Please help to support poetry on Kindle - still an undiscovered world for most readers - by buying this book for less than a pound, or a dollar if you're in the States, and sharing this link, letting others know that it's now available in a digital edition. 


Many thanks! Below are a few of the reviews and recommendations Boudicca & Co received on first publication in paperback.
*

'Jane Holland's Boudicca & Co is a book of adventurous, resonant inventions. As the title suggests, it offers a new view from the interior - of both country and psyche - in which history and geography are co-opted in effortless interplay. It's a work of synthesis, and of poetic and emotional maturity, in which Holland emerges as a true craftswoman, a supple and graceful thinker with an effortless grasp of line, at the heart of the English lyric tradition.'

Fiona Sampson, Editor of Poetry Review


'I reached the fourth section of the book, the Boudicca sequence, and everything went electric ... There's a touch of Vicki Feaver about the violence and the cool delight in blood and innards, but the work is quite distinctive ... I was dashing from poem to poem, completely compelled.'

Helena Nelson, Ambit 2007


'Extremely powerful and varied ... Holland has both the clarity for the reader and the mastery of language to say what she means in a way that makes the brain tingle with both shock and pleasure ... This collection is outstanding.'

Angela Topping, Stride Magazine


'... we need only compare Holland's work with the anti-war 'poetry' of Harold Pinter to gain some indication of how rich and rewarding her response to modern conflict is - by shifting methods towards the imaginative and narrative elements of poetry, rather than the rhetorical and political. In this sense, the 'Boudicca' sequence has a great deal in common with David Harsent's Legion, which represents a similar attempt by a non-combatant poet to engage intelligently with the realities of war. This is, frankly, an outstanding collection, and Holland, as a result, can now count herself amongst the front rank of contemporary British poets.'

Simon Turner, Gists and Piths, 2007

In her unconventional aspect, Boudicca is peculiarly modern, and there are moments in the sequence, where modern wars and conflicts appear to be invading the ancient story. In ‘'Last Stand'', the woods are ‘'thick / with sniper fire'’ and Romans beat the men with ‘'rifle butts''. By breaking with the historic period of the tale, Holland comments on the repetition of atrocities and war, as if Boudicca is looking forward to the suffering and dehumanisation of twentieth-century wars. 

Zoë Brigley in English Studies

Boudicca & Co. is a bold re-imagining of Britishness. Our contemporary England of Sunday roasts and cyberspace gives way to a wild and alien landscape, a place that Holland lays glinting before us “like a coin tossed in the sun / blunt-edged, foreign.” Steeped in myth and medieval poetry, this is a land of “ruins under rain,” hares, oaks, gargoyles and the Green Man. At the heart of it, embodying both Britain’s fierce beauty and its bloodied past, is Boudicca, and her voice is a startling achievement: modern, pitch-black, funny, and yet hauntingly lyrical. Jane Holland’s second collection is full of love and astonishment, a tribute to the resilience of women, to the power of literature, and, most of all, to: “England // my beleaguered sunken island.”

Poet, Clare Pollard

A Regency Celebration Day with the RNA

Do you love Jane Austen and Georgette Heyer? Do you wish you knew how to play Loo or dance a daring waltz?

Then this event is perfect for you: A Regency Celebration Day, hosted by the Romantic Novelists Association, with a varied list of activities for everyone to enjoy.

The RNA will be holding a Regency Celebration on Saturday 8 October 2011 between 9.00am-6.00pm at the Royal Overseas League, Park Place, off St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR (near Green Park tube station).

This event will be a celebration of Jane Austen, Georgette Heyer and the books they have influenced.  It coincides with the launch of a new biography of Georgette Heyer, written by Dr Jennifer Kloester, and 2011 also happens to be the bi-centenary of the publication of Jane Austen’s “Sense & Sensibility” – both perfect excuses for a Regency themed day!

The day will be a mixture of serious talks and more frivolous activities, and will include the following:-
• Georgette Heyer, Her Life and Writing – Talk by Dr Jennifer Kloester
• Sense & Sensibility: The Things You Didn’t Know – Talk by Amanda Grange
• Austen & Heyer – Were they better than they thought they were?  Panel discussion
• The Celestial Bed: Sex and the Georgians – Talk and panel discussion
• Regency Scents: Odours and Malodours – Louise Allen and Christina Courtenay “sniff-and-tell”
• Regency Clothing - Jane Walton demonstrates the fashions of the day
• Regency Dancing – Mr and Mrs Ellis Rogers take us through the steps
• Parlour Games – Learn how to play Whist, Piquet, Vingt et Un or Loo
• Regency Walk – Guided tour of St James’s
• Afternoon Tea **

(**  Please note, on a first come first served basis, fifty delegates will be able to attend a special afternoon tea at the East India Club in the room where the Prince Regent was given the news of the battle of Waterloo.  For everyone else, there will be afternoon tea at the Royal Overseas League.)

Throughout the day, there will be a book stall and author signings, as well as a chance to chat to authors of historical romance.  There will also be a competition and a quiz, with prizes donated by the authors.

The price for the day, including a sandwich lunch, tea and coffee, is only £55 (although for those of you wanting to attend the Waterloo Tea there is an extra charge of £18).  At lunchtime, there will also be a cash bar available for extra drinks.

It all promises to be a wonderful day, so please spread the word!

If you’d like to join us, please fill out the booking form on our site.  If you have any queries, please e-mail Pia Fenton at pia.fenton AT googlemail.com and you can join us on Facebook on the events page “A Regency Celebration” for regular updates. Authors – please contact Pia for a copy of our Authors’ Information Sheet.