Me & Michael Drayton - thick as thieves

Last year, I was commissioned to write a poem for Polesworth, a village (or small town, technically) in North Warwickshire. The poem has now been written and presented to the local council, and is soon to be displayed on the Polesworth Poetry Trail. There's also a poetry competition in hand - see link below for details - for which I will be one of the judges.

Now for the amusing part of this story. After researching the history of Polesworth, I chose to write about their local river, the Anker, blissfully unaware that the other poem they had already chosen for the Trail was the Elizabethan poet Michael Drayton's poem on exactly the same theme - apparently one of his sonnets from the sequence, Idea's Mirror.

Great minds think alike, clearly.

Here's a link to a local newspaper report about the poem and the Polesworth Poetry Trail & Competition, with a nice photograph of me in my back garden - looking oddly presentable for once - available online.

On Warwick: poems from the Laureateship

I've just sent off the final draft of my manuscript to Nine Arches Press, who have very kindly taken me on as their debut publication later this year, bringing out a pamphlet of my Warwick Laureate poems to coincide with the Warwick Words Festival.

It's only a very short pamphlet, but quite varied in content. There's my long poem, 'On Warwick Castle', and various pieces of commissioned writing from bodies within Warwickshire, plus some required writing for the Laureateship. That last category includes a selection of poems that will be exhibited alongside the photos which inspired them (taken by Anand Chhabra) at the Festival Poetry & Photography Exhibition.

The whole pamphlet will be called, very simply, 'On Warwick'. Once I know what the cover will look like, I'll post it up here. Possibly with an extract.

Warwick Words: Poetry & Photography Exhibition

Warwick Words Festival Poetry & Photography Exhbition
Art & Wine Gallery, Jury Street
Warwick





Free Entry
Opening times:
Thurs 2nd October 10am – 6pm
Fri 3rd & Sat 4th October 10am – 10pm
Sun 5th October 11am – 5pm

This summer, I've joined forces with Anand Chhabra, Artist-in-Residence at Spencer Yard, Leamington Spa, in a collaborative project of poetry and photography.

Anand has captured people and places around Warwickshire, not with hi-tech photographic equipment but with a £20 Holga camera, demonstrating how to take "artistic, street-style pictures inexpensively".

I'm in the process of writing a series of poems to accompany the photographs. The whole project is due to be exhibited at a Warwick art gallery over the Warwick Words Festival long weekend in October.

'Leamophants' in Latin

As promised, here's that commissioned "Leamophants" poem elegantly translated into Latin by John King, my friend and Latin teacher these past two years. Just for fun!

Many thanks for this, John. It's marvellous. Though I'd better spare you the Leamington Railway Station poem ...


IN MEMORIAM MAGISTRORUM ELEPHANTIUM LEAMINGTONENSIUM SAMUELIS ET GEORGII LOCKHART

Barbarico splendore suo longisque tegentes
palpebris oculos saeptae senioribus adsunt
rugosis placie lentas agitantibus aures.
Lascivae lepidam praebent speciem agmine lauto,
civibus ostentant sese mediamque per urbem
iucundae incedunt festo candore nitentem:
quas homines spectant mirati praetereuntes,
haud timidas veluti tandem sine matre puellas
antiqo vel amore aegras Heroidas aevo.
Rure huc advenere, urbano ut sole fruantur,
et vitream opposuit cum forte taberna fenestram,
ipsae se simili mirantur imagine captae.
Serica cuique sua est umbella proboscide curva,
leniter huc illuc quae pulverulenta movetur.

Centum anni fugiunt: illas nunc cernere possis
ante oculos hortis lento agmine procedentes
vespere per mediam frigus sub fluminis undis
corpora mersuras: naso caudaque catenam
inter se nectunt: durum pulsant pede campum
et vasto et tenero - sic stat serrata columna
firma solo. Modo non ingenti mole dianthos
contundunt tagetesque instructos ordine flores.


John King
(Classics Department: Rugby School)

God's Wonderful Railway

"God’s Wonderful Railway
thundering through the Chilterns
from the big smoke
to the cool of the Spa."

You can now read my most recent poem, intriguingly entitled On the Recent Renovations at Leamington Spa Station, 2008, over on my Warwick Poet Laureate blog.

I'm rather getting into these public poems now; they can be good fun if you enter into the spirit of each commission. Find the rest of the above poem, commissioned last month by Chiltern Railways, at my Warwick blog.

Leamophants

Photograph appears courtesy of Leamington Spa Art Gallery & Museum, Warwick District Council

As promised last month, here is the poem commissioned in connection with the Warwick Poet Laureateship to commemorate the recent re-siting of the elegant 'Elephant Circle' seat by Nicholas Dimbleby in Jephson Gardens, Leamington Spa, which you can see pictured above - with one of my own sons taking an impromptu elephant ride!


Circus Elephants in Royal Leamington Spa
OR
Leamophants*
(in memoriam Sam & George Lockhart, elephant trainers)

Exotic, thick-lashed, they arrive
with their entourage
of flap-eared uncles and wrinkled aunts.

Flirtatious, on elegant display,
they sashay
the white length of the Parade

and people stare as they pass,
bold debutantes
overwintering at the Spa.

Like heroines from a Regency romance,
come here to acquire
‘a little town bronze’,

they admire themselves in shop fronts,
twirling Oriental silk parasols
in their dusty trunks.

One hundred years on, you can
almost see them
in the park each dusk, walking

single file in the cold,
taking themselves down to the river
to bathe; daisy-chaining,

trunk-to-tail, their vast
delicate feet
like scallop-edged drums

thumping the concrete,
always just missing the civic pinks
and marigolds.


* 'Leamophants' is an alternative title for this poem, dreamt up by Jon Morley of Heaventree Press fame; didn't take to it at first, but now I rather like it. Thanks, Jon!

Commissioned poem for Leamington Spa Railway Station: official reading Friday 23rd May

Tomorrow lunchtime I'll be reading a new poem, specially commissioned last month by Chiltern Railways, at the unveiling of a plaque to commemorate refurbishments at Leamington Spa Railway Station's Art Deco interior.

For anyone in the area, the event starts at 12pm in the beautiful main entrance area to the station, where original Art Deco tiles and granite plinth from the station's 1939 rebuilding by GWR were revealed and renovated during the refurbishments.

More information on the various guests, and on the station itself, are on my Warwick Poet Laureate blog.

Circus Elephants in Leamington Spa: this Saturday, May 24th 2008

A few months back, you may recall that I was commissioned to write a poem on the history of circus elephants in Leamington Spa.

Not as random as you might think - two circus-owning brothers in the Victorian era kept a number of elephants from Ceylon in the town, and walked them up and down the famous Parade to bathe in the river each day!

So, in my capacity as this year's Warwick Laureate, I wrote a poem about elephants in Leamington, and the big day for its first public reading is this Saturday:

"On Saturday 24 May at 12noon the seat sculpture, ‘Elephant Circle’ by Nicholas Dimbleby will be officially unveiled by Councillor Chris White at its new location in Jephson Gardens. The sculpture has been relocated from its former position outside the northern entrance to the Royal Priors shopping complex in Leamington Spa where it was first installed in 1988 and will include a newly recast bronze elephant made by the artist.

The unveiling will be celebrated with a series of events and activities for all ages:

* At 12noon in Jephson Gardens Councillor Chris White will officially unveil ‘Elephant Circle’.

* From 12noon to 2pm events in Jephson Gardens will include a poetry reading by the Warwick Poet Laureate, Jane Holland, readings from a written anthology by local writers which celebrates Leamington Spa’s connection with circus elephants and photography workshops lead by Anand Chhabra, Spencer Yard Artist in Residence."

I'll be posting up the poem online at some point in the future. Meanwhile, you can read more about this commission at my Warwick Laureate blog.

Back to the Wanderer

Re my recent post about Don Paterson and losing the thread of my Wanderer translation, I'm pleased to report that all the controversy has been absorbed into my bloodstream now and I'm translating the poem again.

Though perhaps I should say versioning, since although many parts of my poem are a straight translation from the Anglo-Saxon, I've taken one drastic step away from the original, with the result that it can only ever be a version now.

Please note though, I haven't changed my opinion of Don Paterson's views on translation. I've simply revised my opinion. Which is entirely in keeping with my character.

Meanwhile, in my capacity as Warwick Poet Laureate this year, I've been commissioned to write a poem on the history of circus elephants in Leamington Spa.

Beat that for sheer randomness.


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Now playing: Julius Katchen, Georg Solti; London Symphony Orchestra - Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 2 in C minor, Op. 18, I. Moderato
via FoxyTunes

In Dark Places - the revised draft

Click to enlarge

Now that we're well into January, I can no longer put off posting up my own effort at the Dark Places writing and revision exercise. You've probably all forgotten the original poem, and who can blame you, but there's a scribbled-on draft above and it can also be found on Raw Light here if you want a quick refresher.

The poem's earliest genesis
I began writing this poem by copying out a few lines from Ezra Pound, then attempting to continue in the same 'voice' and style but on a different theme. Cheating? Probably, but not something I'm too worried about. If a particular technique kickstarts a draft, why not use it?

It's not something I do very often, though I did write a poem called 'Thanatos' - published in PNR, and in my second collection - using this technique. I chose an incredibly powerful, almost raw poem by Ted Hughes as a template on that occasion, addressed to Sylvia Plath and entitled 'You Hated Spain'.

The Ezra Pound I used was a snippet of some ten or so lines from the middle of Canto II. It begins 'And, out of nothing, a breathing/hot breath on my ankles'. It's an extract that focuses on the senses above all: smell, taste, touch, sight and hearing. And this emphasis on physicality reminded me of a visit I'd made to the Pont Du Gard, some ten or twelve years ago, with a lover in tow whose star was about to dim for me.

I wanted to keep faith with Pound's use of the senses. So I used 'fish-scaled' and 'urine', thought about how the 'light' inside the aqueduct was blocked by people stepping across the openings above or coming towards us down the narrow tunnel. I remembered the 'rough' walls under our fingertips, the need to stoop. Plus the blinding heat and dust that struck me as I left the cool interior of the aqueduct itself at the far end.

It's the top level of the Pont Du Gard you walk through, which you always used to reach via a short scramble up a dusty hillside and a series of narrow and torturously steep steps. You can climb out onto the very top at intervals - a hazardous decision on a windy day, with no barriers between you and the sheer drop - and stare down at the river below, a marbled greenish-blue dotted with swimmers.

Letting my own voice out
By about the 10th line, I was finding it impossible to sustain that eliptical Poundian style for much longer. So I gave up and just let my mind wander wherever it wished. As you can see from the sudden expansion of the lines, the poem begins to change and develop at that point. Most importantly, the unexpected word 'we' makes an appearance, along with a past tense, both elucidating the narrative voice and giving the poem an emotional context it had originally resisted.

At about that stage, I deleted the lines from Pound that I'd used as a springboard, and gave the poem its own title, Pont Du Gard.

Technical Problems
Why are the 'hands' in line 13 'well-worn'? Surely the stone is worn, rather than the hands. Or was I transferring the epithet unconsciously, thinking of a 'well-worn' relationship, maybe one just about to snap? A clever enough answer, but I'm writing a poem here, not a dissertation.

I played with the line, and cut the too-obvious hands, throwing the primary beat backwards to make 'stone well-worn,/blackened with water'. This tightening of the metre also brings it into line with the earlier part of the poem. But at a later stage of the draft, I found this didn't work and had to change it again, as you can see.

My other basic revisions followed that tendency - i.e. to shorten the line and tighten the metre, removing elements in the second half of the poem which negate the mysterious and abrupt sense-explosions of the first ten or so lines.

I also considered eradicating the later references to 'we' on the same grounds.

Initially, the appearance of 'we' felt like a strong and useful progession to the specific from the general, but that may not be the case if the poem is the weaker for it. Perhaps the human presence, as I write in my marginal notes on the poem itself, anchors this rather ephemeral poem to reality. But it may also ruin it, by destroying its opening atmosphere of other-worldliness and making this feel too much like a 'holiday' poem.

But is it worth saving from the wastepaper bin?
I like this poem. Some of the phrases tug at me pleasingly. But I need to know more about its purpose before I can push on with more rigorous revisions or think about it as a finished piece.

Poems without purpose are like roses without a fragrance. They may look great in magazines, and even poetry collections, but no one remembers them as especially important, including the poet. And if we are at all serious about poetry, we want our poems to have purpose and to be remembered.

Purpose need not be overt in a poem; overt purpose is usually awkward and embarrassing, rather like going about naked in public or wearing too ostentatious an outfit for the occasion. The best sort of purpose is often secret, its deepest levels hidden even from the poet. But it must exist, and we must sense its existence as we read.

So what purpose does this poem have? Answers on a postcard.

The revised draft
Here's one possible redraft, but 'Pont Du Gard' needs far more work if it's to achieve any sort of poetic conviction:

Pont Du Gard
Stone hall for the shrunken,
black pit interior
fish-scaled with urine.
Grim shadows of men
blocking the light up ahead.
Broad squares of sun-flash,
rectangular access
to blind air and buffet.
Swimmers below
pale fins burning in water.
Sink back into darkness
at the next space, worn stone
blackened with water,
the rough runnels of history.
Filigree depths
where the heart struggles to rise.
Pinioned to single file
in the low-roofed
night haul of the Roman:
troll-trod, dwarf dominion.
Afterwards, hot dust and olives,
a dazzle of strangers
on the long road backwards.