Dropping a clanger

Disclaimer: I am incapable of criticising poetry in any serious way, as I have the critical acuity of an ox when it comes to that art. In fairness to the authors I didn't like, therefore, I have redacted their names.

Saturday saw the annual highlight of my literary calendar--Poetry Day at Litfest. An entire afternoon with six poets paired up in duos. W N Herbert (introduced with a quotation from George Szirtes of this parish), was every bit as enthralling as I had hoped, reading in Scots and English, with his reckless, demotic, intelligent, chicaning style. I just want to lift the needle and put it back at the start, every time.

Andy Jackson, a fellow naturalised Dundonian, introduced a poem from a collection he's edited based on television programmes by saying "Today is a good day to do a poem about The Clangers," relaying the joyous news that The Clangers is going back into production for the BBC. He read his poem written in Clang first, before the English translation, in which he avoided the perils of cuteness and nostalgia.

By the way, if this means nothing to you, or you simply want to bask in cuteness and nostalgia, click on the picture to hear Clang as she is spoken by native speakers.

Back in Lancaster, the other highlight of the afternoon was Hannah Lowe, who helped matters greatly by being attractive, pregnant, and wearing a gorgeous purple woolen dress. She read some entertaining, surprising poems about her professional card-playing half-Jamaican, half-Chinese father; her reading thankfully erased [redacted]'s tedious mother-daughter ramblings about fireplaces and veiny hands.

[Redacted] set the last session off with what according to my dispassionate notes was "quasi-religious old-fashioned claptrap," guffawing at his own weak jokes, saying that Angela Carter was a "very very dear, close friend", and telling us how he "adores" Browning--"a bit of an unconventional choice, I know!" Rad. Dope choice, man. David Morley read rather portentuously, trying too hard with the theatrics, breaking off mid-poem to ask someone for a pen, which he then waved about as a prop. I loitered around afterwards for a few minutes but I couldn't afford any books, was too shy to talk to W N Herbert, and the bar in The Storey is a jarring racket of muzak and optically-brightened plastic Argos tat.

On the walk home I landed a few yards behind a local author who has written one of these pseudoscience self-help books for navel-gazing people who haven't got any real problems a locally well-received popular psychology text. A van drew out of a side road; and although I didn't see what happened, the driver wound down his window and told him to fuck off, adding his opinion that Author Man may be given to onanism. Author Man responded weedily. Middle class voices always sound silly when trying to throw back working class insults.

The first edition of our local ale drinkers' magazine has been printed and distributed. I sat in the pub reading my editorial in a glow of best bitter and narcissism. Ned and Tess walked in. Tess had on a most alluring tight thigh-length dress, white with black dots all over it. Would you mind going out and walking in again? I only just saw a second or so of your dress tautening across your thighs as you took each step. She said she's not been to the hairdresser for years; she's got beautiful hair.

But away to the University, as The Sixth Former had invited me to go to see UK Gold, about the way that London has become the principal centre for channelling trillions of pounds worth of wealth into its untaxed overseas territories, and how the City of London has this peculiar, undemocratic, oligarchical system, with unique access and influence on the institutions of government. The Chaplaincy Centre has one of these ugly modern wooden sculptures above the altar, as though someone had grabbed a load of driftwood and flung it onto the wall.

I went for a drink afterwards in Grad Bar with a stranger I met at the film. We passed a poster inviting "self-defining women" to audition for The Vagina Monologues. He had mead, which went to his head rather. I said that there will be a room available here in January. Later, I regretted being so forward.