In Search of Coherence

Here's my dilemma, poetry-wise. I'd like to publish a fourth collection, but I'm not sure who with. I have ideas about that, but am not ready to act on them at the moment.
That's problem number one.

Problem number two is that I don't actually have a book of poems to show to anyone right now. My last full-length book was Camper Van Blues (Salt Publishing 2008). That's four years ago, and I really ought to have another book's worth of poems ready to publish. But I don't, because I've been mostly writing prose fiction since then. And the rest of the time I've been working on various short translations - mainly Anglo-Saxon poetry - and of course my biggest project since CVB, which has been my version of the Middle English poem Gawain and the Green Knight.

I now have about 15 pages of Gawain, cobbled together in a vaguely finished state, and think another hundred and fifty lines should bring it to a close. But finding the time to write those lines isn't as easy as it sounds. You don't just write something like that in your lunch break. It's about finding a rhythm and a feel for the original that can be translated into the version I'm writing, to make a coherent and powerful whole, and that takes time. Well, it takes me time.

So Gawain has to sit on the back boiler until I can find time to re-read the original and get back into the rhythm and mood that inspired me in the first place.

Beside Gawain on that back boiler sit various translations from the AS, plus a gaggle of self-conscious stand-alone lyrics that might or might not be publishable on their own merits, and some rough ideas on how to fit them all together, none of which have any coherence right now.

I also have my long poem On Warwick, which was published by the lovely Nine Arches Press in pamphlet form in 2008, but which I'd like to see as part of a collection.

Basically I can't decide if Gawain should be published alone - it's very short though, even for a chapbook - or in book form.

If it goes into a book, along with On Warwick, then I have a full collection ready to show. But if it doesn't, then I don't have enough for a book.

What needs to happen now is for me to finish Gawain, write more stand-alone lyric poems, polish up my Anglo-Saxon translations, and get the shape of this fourth book right. I have a list of possible victims publishers, places which might take my career further forward and help me with poetic direction. But will any of them have me?

I suppose that question is academic until I've done the actual work. Perhaps I need a poetry retreat?

Canzoni

This is a long poem taken from my debut collection The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman (first published by Bloodaxe in 1997, now available in a revised form on Kindle as Disreputable). I published substantial extracts from Canzoni on the blog in May 2008. But since it's now 2012 and I probably have a wider readership now, it seems fair to post it up again for another outing.

Canzoni does have an explanatory preamble, but I'd prefer the poem to stand alone without going into it. So I shall not bother to comment on its inspiration, except to say that the "Inquisition" scene in the middle has an unfortunate and highly unsuccessful Oxford interview at Magdalen College at its heart. If you think I'm difficult in my mid-forties, imagine me at age seventeen.

I'm rather glad I outgrew this type of self-indulgent posturing (or hope I did) and the knowing obscure references which feel rather silly at this distance in time. It has some good things in it though, so it's worth a nod.

Canzoni


Your image blurs
in a fingerprint of rain,

shark’s-eye twitching the lens
like a landed fish
as you gather yourself.

This is your funeral.
You cannot afford to be absent.

*

Where the world was, there is a hole.
At the bottom, a rotten box
opens steel hinges.

The church stiffens
into the future, beckoning.

The goddess bends over the pram
in a wave of bright light and eucalyptus.
Her skin has the look of scouring pads.
She is angry, then diffident.

When she goes,
she leaves something with me –
so tiny I could tuck it under my fingernail
and not notice –
but it shines, it sparkles!

It turns in the wind like a seed
hungry for soil, then sits all summer
under the red bell of the rhubarb.

I hear it pressing
cool dark clay
with its arm stumps.

*

This coal bunker is so drab
it is almost innocuous;

inhabiting the air like a virus,
its unseen spores drift inwards.

This photograph
must have been taken in ’68 –

he came out with a sledgehammer
not long after

and reduced it to rubble –
but I remember the smell, the gritty feel of it.

Coal dust is like pollen –
I carried it around in my lungs

summer after summer,
a black hive.

*

It was always raining
and the bookcase was always full.

After the rug ended,
before the skirting board began,

your dark spine shone like skin
under my fingers.

You were a shadow
on an x-ray,
growing and deforming.

They should have had you removed
but you were part of me –
a sucker, coming out of the soil
where the graft root was accidentally buried.

Your words hatch
white clutch-eggs in my larynx
twenty years on,

where the dull sheen of pearls
first gleamed under my palate.

*

This is no mosquito.
The lump is already swelling and purpling
like the eyesockets of an aborted head.

It stinks of old cats, fishbones, dustbin lids.

It has no name,
so reluctantly I give it yours –
unwanted, it’s been skulking about for years
and demands purpose.

I will give birth to a wolf bite.

*

The car ticks over,
the soft green pit pit pit
of rain on the windscreen.

It is three minutes to twelve.

When the lightning comes,
it is a steel pin
in the throat of the morning,

holding noon from midnight
and one swift breath
from the other.

Afterwards, I shudder down the lane
like an old woman,

thirty seconds closer
to whatever took you.

*

This is not The Purple Rose of Cairo
where you will walk out of the screen,
a dea ex machina,

but the echo of an echo,
repeating myself
as I try to unwrangle

future from present,
present from past historic,

finding them all
on the same skein of wool
like runners from a strawberry,
budding intermittently.

There will be no
ice cream at the interval.

Down, down, the house lights
have all gone down,

leaving nothing but the waiting,
as I step outside my own skin

into the silver skin of history.

*

This room breathes
the dark stench of the Inquisition.
She does not have the answers to your questions.

Will you stretch her on the rack?
Is she your next victim?

A star swivels
above the one glinting eye
of the brickwork, aching
to be opened and examined.

Milk-white, it tenses and folds.
She is not a cat. She will not drink it.
It stands for insanity, knowledge.

Your questions beat about her head
like sisters, their blood is on her fingers.

*

God, for a heart rent like a veil –

flayed on an anvil
like the skin of a walrus –

ripped, beaten so thin
its veins, its valves,
the bright gush of aorta,
wither to sun-dried red chillies.

*

Her black-hole-eye collapses
in on itself. The debris
thickens and follows.

Tell me, old man,
what was it like
to sleep with the goddess,

to taste her death,
the retreat of it?

Your mind is a morgue.

Images lie tagged on the tables,
smiling postmortem,
the flash of a shutter.

For this sad pilgrimage to end,
the beast herself

must rise and walk,
bearing her slab
like a standard before her.

*

There is a bullet
lodged in your gullet,

a small shining oblong
with the voice
and cry of a woman.

The hare, the grouse,
the blood-flecked rabbit,
dance on your rain gibbet,
creaking their shut eyes.

The sea walks tall
in the distance,
a whisper of silver
past the high grasses

where the moon hangs
like a crude symbol
over a rough cot.

There is no way
to ward off this evil.

You will lie face-down
for centuries,
picking out her features:
stones from mud.

*

I step back,
listening to where the ripples
found me,

the still drop of a stone
into dark water,
the endless concentric circles.

After the stone’s entry,
the waters heal themselves
like lips closing on silence.

From the depths,
the world comes back
as a blue shadow,

seen through the shallow eye
of a stone.

*

Worm wriggles
inside his fur pouch, stretching.

The animal died last month.

His mouth is squeaking
the tin whistle
of its teeth, restlessly.

Then the wind shifts.
His damp striations rise
and coil.

Someone has hung someone else
out to dry.

*

The clock calls in the hall
with its first hand, striking.

She says something,
but the crack of your heart
is too loud to hear it.

Through the dark room,
you see the glint of her breath
as she turns into the pillow.

She knows. She knows.

The sheets pull like dust-jackets
into your hand.

*

Harnessed to the air,
she is anathema –

no birds touch her.

The stinging flail
of the sun catches her ankle.

She is anchored
to a heat-source, incandescent.

Her marigold mouth
blisters
and shrivels –

is this how death feels? –

her hair withers
like a field of burnt bracken.

The thrush
starts from the thicket
as she arches, hollow candle,
from one form to another.

The lawn leaves a charred circle
where her feet fall.

*

Black ash
under the broad sweep of an oak.

Starlings sift
through its fingers.

She imagined herself violent,
failing to see how the line breaks
at the meridian,

leaving her stranded, unalterable.

Too far inland for the sea,
crashing between houses, gleaming
like the blunt edge of a sickle –

where a boat might cross and recross,
telling its history –

but still now as the centre,
silent, irreproachable.

Not Beaten Yet

Time for a Raw Light relaunch?

I was taken aback the other week when, answering a friend's questions during a lit-mag interview, it was suggested that Raw Light, i.e. this blog, was 'over'.

Is that truly people's perception, that this blog has gone the way of all flesh, or rather that my poetry career has tumbled in that direction? That in turning to prose, I have somehow closed the door on poetry altogether?

I know that I've been very busy elsewhere, and indeed have a new blog for my historical fiction as Victoria Lamb, but I genuinely wasn't aware that Raw Light had become a dead space. But perhaps my usual readers feel it is no longer worth visiting. Over the past year I've thought of my poetry blog as being on hiatus, on a sabbatical, not dead but just resting - "pining for the fjords," as it were.

The problem, as with most things, has been time. Time closely followed by energy. Or rather a shortage of both.

So this is a promise, or a threat, or both, and a reminder that Raw Light is not beaten yet. It's been going since 2005 and it's still on the air. These things are cyclical. And maybe that giant wheel is slowly juddering back round again. We'll see.

Interview on The Camarillo Review

Epicentre

It feels odd to step back into the world of poetry, my time is so constantly wrapped up in prose fiction. But I was interviewed recently by Sean Colletti for The Camarillo Review.

This interview was largely in connection with my recent work as editor of Epicentre. (The poetry magazine is on summer break, by the way, so please don't send me work for it!)

Anyway, the interview is here on The Camarillo Review. Here's an extract:

"The main time to listen to advice is if you feel uncertain yourself, and what an editor or fellow poet says seems to make sense. Sometimes you can be too close to your work to see the flaws or their solutions. But at the same time, I’m not a big fan of listening to other people (as my husband would tell you). If you want to write what everyone else is writing, go ahead and take classes, join groups, seek advice from fellow practitioners. Because in general the advice you get will push you in the direction of homogenising your work. And that kills originality.

Yes, I know that seems to be giving a carte blanche to every crackpot who thinks their work is wonderful when it isn’t. But so what? As long as they don’t send their work to me, I’m fine with it."

Goodreads

Here's a little request for those of you who are on Goodreads (a site for readers to list and share information on their books).

Out: Thursday 5th July

I'm on Goodreads as Victoria Lamb, and have a new novel out this week. It's an historical paranormal novel for Young Adult readers, and is called Witchstruck.

It's listed on the Goodreads Historical Fiction 2012 list, somewhere in the twenties, and I'd love to see it climb a little higher. 12 more votes will get it into the top ten.

So if you're on Goodreads, it would be great if you could amble over to this list of new historical novels for 2012 and vote for Witchstruck

Many thanks!

Deep in Revision Land

I was back in Caernarfon last week, a place I love to visit when writing. Walking out at dusk for some air, I spotted a couple of students making a number of paper hot air balloons and letting them go over the harbour.

A few moments after this shot, the hot air balloon caught fire and dropped gracefully into the water a few feet from the Harbour Master's building. He came out and stared down at this soggy pink mess in the water, then at us giggling on the other side of the harbour. At which point I made a hasty exit.

The day before that I was in the Welsh seaside resort of Llandudno, where I had an excellent cup of tea and bought Alan Hollinghurst's new paperback, The Stranger's Child. Needless to say, I have not even opened this very beautiful-looking book as I am still deep in revision land.

I have about 48 hours to complete revisions on my latest Victoria Lamb novel, provisionally entitled His Dark Lady, a Tudor four-hander which revolves around William Shakespeare's relationship with his "dark" mistress.

Dunkirk boats in Diamond Jubilee pageant

As the day of the Diamond Jubilee pageant on the River Thames in London arrives, I thought it might be amusing to comment on the fact that some of the boats used to evacuate soldiers from the beach at Dunkirk will be taking their place on the river today.

I mention this because there is an old Dunkirk rescue boat which shares my name: Jane Holland.

The Jane Holland was one of 19 lifeboats sent to Dunkirk to evacuate the British Expeditionary Force. You can find photographs of her and her crew here at the Eastbourne RNLI site. According to the station historians, a Naval Officer had asked for a boat which would not sink on its way to Dunkirk, like all the others he had been given. He was given the Jane Holland, which was unfortunately rammed on her approach to the beach - leaving a great gash in her side - and then riddled with machine-gun bullets from a German fighter plane. When the engines failed, and the boat came under further enemy fire, those on board were forced to abandon ship right outside Dunkirk Harbour.

Despite this hellish attack, the Jane Holland did not sink. She was found a few days later, floating in the English Channel, utterly battered and bashed, letting in water and splendidly decorated with over 500 bullet-holes. Incredibly, the boat was repaired and later returned to active service as a lifeboat in the early 1940s.

Since she seems to have 'left service' after a final rescue mission in 1948, I don't imagine the Jane Holland is still going. But it's nice to think of her spirit at least, floating down the Thames today with the other extant boats of the Dunkirk evacuation.

Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival

Our Beloved Leader

Having moved to a particularly remote corner of Britain, on the darkling, wind-tossed fringes of the wilds of Bodmin Moor, and having been informed on inquiring in Bodmin itself that there was 'no poetry' anywhere about, I was utterly amazed the other day to receive a newsletter from Helen Jagger in which a 'Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival' was mentioned.

Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival?!

This has to be a spoof, I thought. A poetry festival in the middle of nowhere? The link in the newsletter didn't work, and I became even more suspicious that someone was having me on. But then I googled it and found this very convincing website:

Bodmin Moor Poetry Festival, with Carol Ann Duffy, no less. Plus, Jackie Kay, Ann Gray, shortlisted in 2010 for the National Poetry Competition, and various others.

So it seems wherever I go - however remote, desolate or unlikely a spot for versifying - I cannot shake poetry off, damn the stuff. There's an open mic night too. Should I go, do you think?

We Have Moved to Cornwall

Well, I don't seem to have mentioned this rather important piece of information, so here it is. We have now moved from Warwickshire to Cornwall. Some four and a half hours' distance by motor vehicle. Nice place, plenty of space, an old farmhouse on the edge of moorland. Bit damp, mind.

Epicentre Magazine launches!

No, I haven't died, I've just been very busy recently. After much procrastination, not to mention a few tasty Easter eggs, my new literary-poetry venture "Epicentre Magazine" is finally live online.

Edited by me, with Ian Chung as my fearless assistant editor, the first issue features work by fourteen poets, one reviewer and a fiction writer. So Epicentre is starting off as a small but perfectly formed ezine.

Please do go and read some of the contributions, and hopefully leave a few comments. I'd love to hear your opinions. More work will follow in the next few weeks, so do please keep checking for fresh content.

You can find Epicentre's first ever issue HERE.

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.