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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.
13 comments
Normally I wouldn’t give the time of day to the normally unctuous Dundonian poets of old, let alone a dolichocephalic one who allegedly spends much of his time frequenting seedy rampastures in the Lothian area. Couple this with the fact that his ode to Star Trek nearly made me boak when I heard it being recited in a honey-drawled faux Scottish accent on a long haul flight back from Australia some years since. It could well have been me offering verbal abuse from the comfort of a trusty Transit if I had not ripped the earjack from the shared seat rest and flung it up the aisle back into economy class of whence it first came.
However, he is a talented infracaninophile, that I cannot deny. His defiance when it comes to preferring his mother tongue over the English (spit) language, has me applauding him from afar. I also actually quite enjoyed his ‘Bad Shaman Blues’ to the point of buying it as a hednon for my niece.
I’ve no academic way of evaluating poetry other than perhaps how I judge music, quite simply, does it stir me?
I like the way you evaluate clothes, Looby.
( Chef, you had me reaching for the dictionary and measuring my head )
Chef: an airline had recordings of WNH? I’m incredulous.
Now then, as a public and private service:
dolichocephalic: having a long skull
hednon: wedding present
infracaninophile: not in the SOED, so it doesn’t count. But trying to put the elements together – lower than + dog + lover, so you’ve either made a subtle reference to Herbert’s poem “Dog” which was sparked by Ruth Padel’s lesser-quoted comment that “dogs do not think in metaphors", against which idea the poem is built, or I am barking up the wrong tree.
Isn’t Bad Shaman Blues brilliant? I heard him recite it at Keswick Literature Festival a few years ago. It just makes me laugh and think and go into jelly.
———
GB: That’s just how I evaluate it too.
Thanks. Clothes, my own and others’ are important to me.
Good god! People are still performing The Vagina Monologues? After all these years you’d think the damn things would be able to tell the tales themselves…
Yes, it’s getting a little bit like the McDonalds of women’s empowerment.
For the love of all things holy, a simple word like that can surely be deciphered merely by pressing a few keys Mr looby. Perhaps the next time you have dinner guests you might ask them to introduce a spot of deipnosophy into the evenings entertainment.
Student bars appear to have either upped the alcohol level or lowered the level of IQ required for ones diplomas. Please see me in my office after lunch, must try harder.
Infracaninophile - One who supports or defends the underdog.
Yes but in my day we looked things up in a dictionry, rather than “merely pressing a few keys.” I realise that such a habit is becoming laughingly outdated. Thanks for the definition though. Some of the words you use don’t have any currency, words for which you’d struggle to find citations in literature or parlance. I’m a gobbler-up of new vocabulary, but I want words with a background, even if that background is archaic.
But never mind that, let’s talk about sex, baby. At the risk of boring others less bloggingly internecine, I think you flirt with Daisyfae very well. I enjoyed your comment about her flimsy clothing. Literate and sexy.
Here’s a splendid fuckabout on the art of dinner table converation–or deipnosophy, as the Weegies say.
A splendid example in your link sir. You have redeemed yourself and then some.
Daisyfae is a pure peach of a woman. One cannot help but suffer the pangs of oculoplania when in her company. A perfect mixture of ipsedixitism and pure silky sexiness oozes from every pore of her subtle femininity as she often reclines on a velvet causeuse I keep in a locked room within in my mind.
To summarise, Daisyfae is a luxurious ice cream, buttery, creamy and irresistible after a single lick.
Here is a witty ditty which explains what ipsedixism is.
Bravo my boy. Ipsedixitism - The practice of dogmatic assertion.
Tis good to see that years of eupsychics has not been wasted on yet another Englishman currently doing the rounds in Glasgow.
We shot and ate the last one by the way.
i’ve had myself a right swoon! when you talk so purty like that, i getz a funny feelin’, right down in my basement!
looby – although he talks a good game, i really want him because he has an enormous penis.
I do have a name for my genitalia. You can’t say it out loud as it is quite a mouthful…
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