One more from Gawain

One more from the putative Gawain sequence; this time, contemporaneous with the original setting of the poem, i.e. Britain in the Dark Ages.

Still not sure how the two times - medieval and modern - would or even could merge in the finished sequence, but that's not worrying me too much at the moment. The whole thing may not get written at all, so finer details like that - how far can I push this idea? will it work? what am I trying to do here? - are entirely academic at this early stage. Better just to concentrate on getting the poems out.

That's the point of a sequence, after all. To squeeze the poems out like a litter of kittens, not worry about how they'll get on together once they're older.

So here's another Gawain poem for those who may be interested (and one specially aimed at all those Hughes fans out there, she adds shamelessly).

Did the indent this time. It looked too odd without it.

Wind’s eye narrows on mud-ruts and fields

Wind’s eye narrows on mud-ruts and fields
frowsy with hoar-frost.

Battlements.

Air bitters deep snow-sallies
bleak over crenellations.

Arthur, hood back, brisk in white ermine,
paces the hall at Camelot.

Young man, new king.

A draught ripples the curtains.

Still his, still perfect, not yet lost to him,
she enters the hall.

                      Becomes light

a shadow aslant tables.

So love lifts out of the dull evening
a star

glimpsed
through the flood of the dark.

Keats and Gawain: a Dynamic Duo?

I fell ill last Thursday with a really nasty illness of some kind, which I can only describe as 'bronchial flu', and am only just recovering. Still a little groggy, light-headed, and am on the verge of losing my voice, I fear.

So apologies for my absence from Raw Light, but since we've been discussing the writing of poems in the voice of the opposite gender, amongst other things, here is a sneak preview of the poem sequence I've been playing with.

This is one of the less successful poems, out of about ten that I've written so far, in the voice of Gawain - or a modern-day Gawain-like character - from the anonymous Middle English verse romance Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. (I'm posting up a possible reject to avoid publishing one which I might subsequently like to place somewhere else, i.e. in a print publication.) It's just to give you a taster of what I mean, really, and to open up the topic for discussion, if there is any discussion left in this topic.

On Friday, by the way, at 9pm, a shortened version of a radio play I wrote on spec a few years back will be broadcast on RaW, which is the University of Warwick radio station. They don't yet have a Listen Again facility, but may do later in the year, but for now, if you click on the following link to RaW just before 9pm on Friday 16th January, you should be able to listen to the play live!

The play is called IN BED WITH JOHN KEATS and is approximately 15 minutes long - condensed down from 45 to fit their scheduling requirements, believe it or not. I originally wrote it for a Radio 4 slot, but then couldn't decide if it was ready to send off or not, so just never sent it off.

I haven't heard it recorded, so can't comment on what it's like. But it's short and I wrote it, so if either of those things turn you on, I'd be really pleased if you are able to listen in and let me know what you think.

I remember mentioning the title of the play in a phone call to Barry MacSweeney once - that's how long ago I wrote the thing; he's been dead a good few years now, sadly - and he loved it, and the concept. But he was always a rum 'un, was Barry.

Remember, 9pm on Friday 16th January, at RaW.

Now here's that poem I promised you. I've chosen a 'modern' one, written in the first person, and the action - I suppose - comes from Fitt II, where Gawain is travelling through the forest - cold, hungry and desperate - just before he comes across the isolated castle of Hautdesert. Some of these lines are indented, but as usual, I can't be bothered to do the required HTML. Sorry!

Wheels spin in the deepening ruts


Wheels spin in the deepening ruts,
smoke-whine of an engine
going nowhere.

I clamber out, boots sunk
in morass,
to examine the failure.

Around me in the darkness
trees creak
and a stuttering ribbon of white light
flutters over the hills
directly across the valley hollows,
then vanishes.

No signal on the mobile.

I straighten from the wheel
embedded in mud.
It will take chains or thick rope
to get it out; a job for a tow-truck.

I stand a long while, uncertain,
searching the limits
of that drop-down thicket,
hunting for a light,

unseen ocean above me,
black tide washing
in and out.

Winners of the Stephen Spender Prize 2008

My apologies for not blogging this past week. I have the best excuse in the world; I was writing. Eight poems in the last seven days, to be precise. Which is particularly pleasing, given that poetry had slowed to a trickle for me in recent months (following the somewhat apocryphal deluge of the summer).

The sudden outpouring is due to a new sequence, of course. Sequences always get me writing with more ease and fluidity. More on that later, since though I've rushed in with the first few poems, the overall structure is still in the process of being shaped in my mind.

So, back to the Stephen Spender Prize 2008.

Joint Winners of the 14s-and-under prize:
Paula Alonso-Lalanda - 'Let's go to the Market!' by Gloria Fuertes (Spanish)
Scarlett Koller - 'Roundelay' by Charles d'Orleans (French)

Winners of the 18-and-under category:
Daniel Galbraith (FIRST) - Amores I.V. by Ovid (Latin)
Iwona Luszowicz (SECOND) - 'In Remembrance of Marie A.' by Bertolt Brecht (German)
Rupert Mercer (THIRD) - Catullus VIII (Latin)

Winners of the Open Category:
Imogen Halstead (FIRST) - Amores 1.1. by Ovid (Latin)
Jane Draycott (SECOND) - an extract from Pearl (Middle English)
JOINT THIRD PLACE:
Emily Jeremiah - 'Theorem' by Eeva-Liisa Manner (Finnish)
Timothy Allen - 'Broken Heart, New Lament' by Nguyen Du (Vietnamese)

The winner of the Open category, Imogen Halstead, is currently in China and couldn't make the award ceremony. So Andrew Motion, Poet Laureate, agreed to read the poem in her place. To make her win even more astounding, Imogen is actually 18, and was the original winner in the 18-and-under category. However, the judges decided that her presence there was so powerful as to be unfair to the other poems entered, so she was 'bumped up', in the words of one judge, to win the adult category instead.

For me though, the most powerful and mesmerising poems of the evening undoubtedly came from Daniel Galbraith and Rupert Mercer, talented young writers in the 18-and-under category with two highly idiosyncratic translations from the Latin, and Jane Draycott, whose extract from 'Pearl' was beautifully and sparingly written.

After the readings, we mingled. The awards were being held at the Venezuelan Embassy in central London, a packed hall with tiered seating and a generous raised platform for the performers. Some extraordinarily tasty red wine was served, and a selection of canapés. Lady Spender was there, along with a smattering of other Spenders, Valerie Eliot (the widow of T.S. Eliot), and other luminaries of the poetry world, including Josephine Balmer, one of the judges and herself a fine poet and classicist.

I spoke at length to Matthew Spender, founder of the new 14-and-under category, whose speech had strongly criticised the government as 'not sympathetic to the idea of studying foreign languages in schools'. He considers these prizes for younger translators a 'reproach' to the government for their apathy, and I have to agree with him.

Heaventree Press founding editor Jon Morley, who published my 'Lament of the Wanderer' translation earlier this year, was also there that night, along with Susan Bassnett, a pro-vice-chancellor at the University of Warwick. Susan was one of the Stephen Spender Prize judges, and is herself an expert in a number of languages, including an old favourite of mine, Anglo-Saxon.

Taking the train back to the Midlands together, the party atmosphere continued for another hour, with an enthusiastic discussion of translations, 'poets we have known', and what each of us is currently working on.

Home just before midnight, I then had to hurriedly dash off a Middle English translation for a class the next morning. It was Chaucer, the wonderfully obscene Miller's Tale. From the sublime to the ridiculous!