Friday 28 December 2012

"The Next Big Thing"

The indefatigable Sophie Mayer has tagged me in a blog game called "The Next Big Thing," where one uses a set list of questions to interview oneself about one's most recent or next book and tags others whose work s/he admires to do the same. Here I answer questions about my (presumably) forthcoming third collection, Imagined Sons; my pamphlet/chapbook The Son (Oystercatcher, 2009) provides a sample of it. Thanks for thinking of me, Sophie!



What is the working title of your book?
Imagined Sons
Where did the idea come from for the book?
It began with a prose poem I wrote in 1995, where I imagined meeting my son when he came of age. I wrote half a dozen such poems over the next ten years. 
What genre does your book fall under?
Poetry
Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition?
I think a different actor would need to play each new incarnation of the imagined son, to suggest the breadth of possibility. I'd love Christina Ricci to play me. 
What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?
Imagined Sons explores a birthmother's consciousness through two kinds of poems: Imagined Sons, where the birthmother imagines meeting her son once he's come of age; and Birthmother's Catechisms, where the same question recurs over time with different answers. 
How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?
The first poem was written in 1995, but I didn't work on the series wholeheartedly until 2006 (at that point only six  "Imagined Sons" had been written). The first draft of the manuscript took the better part of a year, but I've been revising the manuscript steadily since then. 
Who or what inspired you to write this book?
The desire to explain or share my experience as a birthmother in a more immersive, less confessional poetry. 
What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

I expect people who enjoy flash fiction would like the generally narrative drive of the prose poems.



The poets I'm tagging are two wonderfully imaginative, intelligent, and kind poets. Their interviews should be up within a week:
Jennifer Militello
Zoe Brigley

Wednesday 26 December 2012

R.F. Langley's Collected Poems (Carcanet, 2000), first selection

Some favourite passages:



...soothed
passage of the cars, slight
pressure of the sparrow's
chirps--just what the old glass
gently tested, bending,
she would have meant, and not
a dream ascending. 

*

...the lie she told to throw
the truth into relief.

Into the pure relief
of ordinary light.

from "Mariana"


We leave unachieved in the 
summer dusk. There was no
need for you rather than me.
Here is the unalterable truth.

*

Now, when I need it, I'm so close
to emptiness.

*

We find
peace in the room and don't
ask what won't be answered.

from "The Upshot"


We sway up, shut
down and open, coolly, each
small hour.

*

These inroads let
me understand, and mark
sharply. Over what? Over
brilliant quietness.

*

White hedonism cut on blue
intelligence and laced
with silver anxiety. Bravo.

from "The Ecstasy Inventories"


It is a common experience to come upon a
pale, glittering house set far back across
a meadow. It is certainly inside you.

*

The unexpected colours stare. The crowd
is wholly intent. A fluttering. A blaze.

*

The self is felt, 
as standing, fired, inside the diamond.

from "Juan Fernandez"


The drunk. Hush. Lay him down in
the sound of his name.

from "Saxon Landings"


O you, o you he
this, she this
here, once, and
again and again
fieldgate.

from "Blithing"


Unbidden thoughts come sometimes

lustrous.

from "Rough Silk"


Once more the menace of the small
hours and of coming to light and of
each sharper complication.

*

This still
increasing presence is for the last time.
Then the beginning of an immense grip.

*

Nothing I want settles
anything.

*

It's a strange 
relief to transform your fretting into
the silent coiling of a phantom dragon.

from "The Gorgoneion"


R.F. Langley's Collected Poems is available directly from the publisher at a discount.

Sunday 23 December 2012

Even Supposing-- and the new issue of Blackbox Manifold

Some months ago (I believe it was April), I spoke of a new project I'd embarked on, an erasure of Esther Summerson's chapters in Charles Dickens' Bleak House, which I've tentatively titled Even Supposing-- (both Esther's last words in and the last words of the novel, including that splendid dash). The first chapter from that project appears in the new issue of Blackbox Manifold, and I have wonderful company, with Ray DiPalma, Anne Gorrick, Paul Green, W.N. Herbert, Tony Lopez, Erin Moure, Ian Seed, Aidan Semmens, and John Wilkinson, among others, as well as a special feature on Peter Robinson. I'm delighted to be a part of it. 

Monday 17 December 2012

Mary Ann Samyn's Inside the Yellow Dress (New Issues, 2001)

Here are just a few favourite passages from this impressive book. 


It is always like this.
I cannot calculate 
the hurt ahead of time.
I cannot spare myself.

                                            So I go headlong--

I go wanting.

And these flowers:

                                  how bright they are.

Dried,
             they keep their color all winter.

second half of
"Moving Away from an Event"


My mother is anger and want, a small girl.
I am a small girl too.
One of us darts in and out of the bushes.

                          The other cannot imagine her suffering.

end of "Poem with a Riddle in It"


Such a small idea and gone:
her hands in the air at dusk,

                       the sun--just a click now in the trees--

end of "Poem with Light on Its Shoulder"


I say gauzy the way you might say love, 
meaning my hunger--

          desire a net, after all,

                                             and rigged--

from "Fabric/Lyric"



Read my selections from Samyn's Beauty Breaks In (New Issues, 2009 and Purr (New Issues, 2005).


Sunday 2 December 2012

Kelvin Corcoran's Lyric Lyric (Reality Street, 1993)

This book is equally divided into two sections, each titled Lyric. Here some favourite passages from the first section:


...the human meaning
out of the dark dream
breathing immediate words.


*

...a door into the river night
the site of deep assent.

*

How can we ever, that carpet,
I shall pin the dumb song moment
familiar shapes inscribe
man, woman, driving home
return me word by word.


And from the second section: 


It's hard enough under this sky
and in all these other places,
lights fixed and moving
an uncertain grid of fields
without a dream, you knew just what,
come out of that open air.

*

That morning cars came out of the sun,
I couldn't measure the speeds,
careering subjects released from rhetoric
smacked up against the white wall.
The birds flip from branch to branch,
their funny watery cries all around
splash and blend in the garden heat.

*

...inside,
the shape of a country moves through us.

*

In blue September between blue blinds
I write and drink, thinking of money,
thinking inside the physical forms of words
for the pleasures of reification.

*

The bright ones learn Japanese and Arabic
running up the walls of banks, shops and palaces,
the rhythm of neglect, step out of it,
through the door, into the house, talking.



You can buy Lyric Lyric from the publisher for a mere £5.

 

Friday 30 November 2012

Macmillan Writing Day

Three years ago former Bath Spa MA student Rachel Knightley asked if I'd join a group of writers in being sponsored to write for a day, with the money going to Macmillan Cancer Support. I've done it every year, but this year I thought I'd take the cause out to the public and asked Mr B's Emporium of Reading Delights if I could spend part of the day writing at their lovely shop. I'll be there from 1-4 p.m. today and would love to have some visitors. Not that I don't want to write--I always want to write--but I like this idea, of donating one's skills in some way to charity, and would like to see it become more popular. I also want to do what I can for Macmillan Cancer Support. I've lost two former poetry students to cancer in the last few years, first Linda Lamus, then Ellie Evans, and I'm grateful for Macmillan's good work.

Donations can be made here up to a month from today, I believe. Any amount, however small, is most welcome.

Monday 19 November 2012

"Ogres" from Andrew Bailey's first collection, Zeal (Enitharmon, 2012)


Here's a delightful villanelle from Andrew Bailey's first collection, Zeal. Tomorrow night he'll be reading at Topping's here in Bath, and I hope he'll include this. There is some identation in the lines I have been unable to replicate here, by the way.



OGRES

And there there is a lemon that contains
an island where they laugh so loud it hurts –
the souls of all the ogres in Ceylon

have been secreted far enough from harm
that they assume their soulless frames immortal.
But there there is a lemon that contains

the path to the secret citrus grove, wherein
assurances were made that seemed to state
the souls of all the ogres in Ceylon

would be protected. And there, too, to be found
is a blunted knife, an x-marked chart,
and there there is a lemon that contains

a lemon-scented sharpening stone
that hones the sour knife till it could halt
the souls of all the ogres in Ceylon.

And there’s that grove, that path, that laugh again.
You grip the knife, your other hand out flat,
and there there is a lemon that contains
the souls of all the ogres in Ceylon.


Andrew Bailey


In the UK, you can purchase Zeal from the publisher here

Thursday 15 November 2012

Homecoming (Dancing Girl, 2013)

After admiring for years Dancing Girl's handmade chapbooks and focus on women poets, I was delighted when, some months ago, I realized I had a manuscript that might suit. Last night I learned that they--or rather, she, editor Kristy Bowen, agreed, and would be publishing Homecoming in the second half of 2013. Focusing on home, family and death (no, it's not cheery work), the poems have appeared in Court Green, New Welsh Review, Notre Dame Review, Poetry Ireland Review, Poetry Wales, The Rialto, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, The Times Literary Supplement, and The Warwick Review. I guess that list suggests that this manuscript's been some time in the making; in fact it is the basis for a collection in progress, The Weather in Normal. Anticipating a question from my Sudden Prose and other prose poetry students, I'll add that one third of the poems are in prose, two thirds in lines. As the press is based in Chicago I expect I'll buy a goodly stock to sell at readings and by post in the UK--just let me know if you'd like one.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Mary Ann Samyn's Purr (New Issues, 2005)


But even with the day OFF
(shades down, light switched)
the mirror has to do someting with all its energy.

It chooses you. Red Rover Red Rover.



 from "A Third Source of Unnecessary Tension"


A little error: fine
A little accomplishment: better.

I stood aside and watched my mood.

The poem rippled past.

opening of "The Variant for This Is Silence"


All day the day snows down around
each of us separately.

No, the day's debris--

end of "Cabin Fever in the Gray World"


Our new weather makes me regret a thing or two,
that's for sure.

When I leave, I always say thank you
whether I mean it or not.

end of "Crank It Up"


Sorrow, for instance, which had held her in a sling,

a gauzy numbness where she kicked her legs in sleep.


end of "What Happened Next"


As though they had argued, earlier,

or she had remembered she was separate:


These are my hands. I end here.

The space they loved made a cruel sound.
Of course her large sadness had opened,

all the furred animals shifting


in the little boat of sleep.

first half of "Snarl"


You know: first the light and then the hurt
and then the new shoots and how the deer love it.

last stanza of "A Thought, For Example, Is a Form"


The thing is you can't see the cigarette fragments
on the postcard reproduction I bought.

Pollock never stood over this little rectangle.

On the back in boldface: his name and the bar code:
4  0010  39478  4.

The scanner is red-mouthed, tight-lipped.
I owe 35 cents.

By all accounts, this is a good deal,
especially when the universe may, in fact, be a loose bag,
a skin folding back on itself.

You just don't know.

I choose a white loop in Pollock's Number 3, 1949: Tiger.

I go as far as I can.

last third of "Terminal"




Monday 12 November 2012

Self-Censorship and Writing in and out of the Classroom

Yesterday at the annual NAWE conference (the National Association for Writers in Education, UK), I spoke on a panel with Bath Spa colleague Steve May and Columbia College Chicago comrades Randy Albers and Alexis Pride. Titled "Revelation and Transgression: Moving Past Self-Censorship," we spoke both about our own experiences overcoming self-censorship and about trying to get students to overcome it in their own writing. 

I think students feel or obtain such permission largely by example, by the reading they're assigned or recommended and by the instructor's own work. For example, Alexis spoke movingly about how the literary weight given in the classroom to Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye made African-American experience seem welcome subject matter; and after sharing some of the poems that have arisen from my own experience as a birthmother (as in my pamphlet/chapbook The Son), I've had students seek me out to discuss writing and sharing their own work on subjects they consider taboo. The same thing has happened with my experimental poetry--sometimes once a student finds it on her own or comes to a reading I give from it, she'll come to me to find out about experimental writing more generally and how to get started writing it.

The topic lingers in my mind as I consider how I might improve my teaching by broadening such models, perhaps especially in my Sudden Prose module with a wider array of flash fictions and prose poems. Your thoughts and recommendations are most welcome!

Wednesday 17 October 2012

Catherine Wagner's My New Job (Fence, 2009)



What a nervy, original book! I'd dipped into it before but only recently read the whole. Here are a few favourite passages.




I lean forward on a nerve ebullient
my sweet alive and roasting in a current

from "Exercise 1 (11/28/00 PM)"



Good for M the comfortable-with-people to be away from me. tauten the cord to make it all more urgent

from "Exercise 7 (12/3/00 PM)"


The wheatrows flattened
gold, another dark
combed curve opened
like a stretchy
machine.

opening lines of "Exercise 21 (11/8/01 Am) [Back Seat of Minivan]"


Snow
starred when I looked straight up
sky dark gray, geese rose
in alarmed soft shh and hasping
long-necked geese
a-gossip all upset

*

all along I was alone to that
though everyone saw me
checking myself out by talking to them
when they checked themselves out in me
I tried to say O here have it all
     warm woolen flood     welcomer
          some spider-netting held it back,
kept growing over my warm and my intention to befriend

from "Exercise 34 (1/3/02 PM)"


All the following poems come from a section titled, "Everyone in the Room Is a Representative of the World at Large," and all the poems share that title. Each passage comes from a different poem.


I make the bird a flying fist
my violence goes on out along the stream.

---

My beast came up and hit me in the self.

---

It is not a hero
who will approach the mirror of
this appointment
and glide her thighs and torso to it.
That is me


These passages can't convey the experience of the undulations of a whole Wagner poem. For that, please purchase the book from Foyle's in the UK or your independent bookstore in the US.

Monday 15 October 2012

"Unruly: Print into Poetry"

Here are details and images from my dear friend Susan Mackervoy's show of handbook books, prints and poems, with Sophie Herxheimer, at Marine Studios in Margate, running until 20 October. I so wish I could go!

Saturday 13 October 2012

Andre Bagoo's Trick Vessels (Shearsman, 2012)

Thanks to Vahni Capildeo for recommending this book to me--I've enjoyed it. Here are some favourite passages.


Hear this: the ocean is not meant to be lit at night
Instead of going to water I go to light

*

Your mother cannot name her great grandmother
Your father does not know where his village was

But I have such knowledge, I ensure these erasures
I follow the stop, I do not leak

from "The Unnamed Creature Said to Come From Water"


it was easy to imagine your island
a furniture wed to agile spies
        a stable is where they keep me
wrecked forever on memory

the last stanza of "Visa"


...I linger to the surface.

*

Small rooms are the best places for windows, they are so grateful.

*

But when the hermit finds a new shell, there is always a moment when the creature is vulnerable. In between rooms, there is oblivion. A risk of freedom.

*

Evidence is the foundation of everything. But it is a field wrought with dispute.

from "To the Centre of the Earth"


Each question begets violence.
It begs on behalf of its recipient.

from "And This Note Was Not an Answer"




Links to reviews, video, and online purchasing from numerous outlets are available on Shearsman's page for the book.


Tuesday 2 October 2012

zimZalla and Jo Langton's PoeTea


My fondness for zimZalla and its array of avant objects--happily combining the poetic, playful and smart--meant I was delighted when asked to provide a response to one of Jo Langton's splendid PoeTeas, the "fresh" one. I was sorry though that my circumstances meant I just had time to respond with a poem using words from the tea bag (I'd have loved to create a responding object...); you can download the poem here.

Sunday 30 September 2012

Another lovely review of The Son

To cover as many pamphlets as he can in a limited word count, David Morley reviews in Twitter-style in his largely appreciative review of pamphlets from Happenstance, Oystercatcher, Rack, Donut, Knives, Forks and Spoons, and Smith/Doorstop presses. Hence I think I can get away with quoting Morley's entire review of The Son (Oystercatcher, 2009) here without violating fair use: "Carrie Etter's sparkling, serious beating-out of prose poetry and catechism continues in a finely judged sequence, grieving and honouring and surprising on every page. 'It is time' (Etter quotes Celan) 'the stone made an effort to flower'. And so this fine book, its respect, sadness and subject." 

As The Son is the basis of my third collection, Imagined Sons, yet another positive review heartens me that much more. 

Wednesday 26 September 2012

i.m. Henry Ross Etter, 26 September 1940-13 March 2009







I'm listening to Billy Joel's Glass Houses (1980), which we listened to and loved together. Every day is less than it could have been since you've been gone. 

Tuesday 25 September 2012

100,000 Poets for Change in Bath on Saturday, 29 September

Here is the final schedule for Bath's day of readings as part of the international 100,000 Poets for Change, this Saturday, 29 September at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute on Queen Square, with all money raised going to support Julian House, Bath's charity for the homeless. We'll be in the large Elwin room. Here's the schedule:

2:30-3 p.m. Bath Poetry Cafe, with readings from David Cohen, Teresa Davey, Rose Flint, Rosie Jackson, Jill Sharp and Sue Sims

3:10-3:40 p.m. A Pamphlet Party, with poets reading from their pamphlets: Seren Adams (Small History, Shearsman), David Hale (The Last Walking Stick Factory, Happenstance), Dikra Ridha (There Are No Americans in Baghdad's Bird Market, Tall Lighthouse), and Robert Walton (Waiting for the Wave, Pighog)

3:50-4:20 p.m. Bath Spa University MA Poets Past and Present: Graham Allison, Daisy Behagg, Matthew Haw, Caroline Heaton, Alan Summers, Natasha Underwood, John Wheway and Andy Wright 

4:30-5 p.m. Swindon Artswords Presents, with readings from William Bedford, Emily Harrison, Cristina Newton, Bethany Pope and Hilda Sheehan

5:10-5:40 p.m. Bath Spa University Undergraduates

Dinner break

7:30-8:05 p.m. David Briggs and Kelvin Corcoran

8:20-8:55 p.m. Claire Crowther and Tim Liardet 



There will be drinks and books tables throughout the event (manned by Bath Spa student volunteers), and donations will be requested for Julian House. There is no entry fee as such. I am most grateful to Bath Spa University for its support--paying for the room, readers' travel expenses, etc.--so that all donations can go directly to Julian House.

Tuesday 11 September 2012

'one thought galore' from Daniel O'Donnell-Smith's cOdes (Leafe, 2012)

Leafe Press has a new pamphlet series, beginning with the first collection of young poet Daniel O'Donnell-Smith, cOdes, which effectively combines heightened, vernacular and computer languages. This poem has less of the latter, so you'll have to pick up the pamphlet yourself to get a better idea of the extent of O'Donnell-Smith's project, so to speak.












one thought galore


that first spark
at sleeping
where
great thinkers
are vitamin supplements
for things that a slow boy learnt

the sum born from giants
is
trickle down

a pool hall of ideas

                                             [multiple user content]

and there i was reading this:

the mind automaton.


Daniel O'Donnell-Smith
cOdes (Leafe, 2012)


If you buy cOdes directly from the publisher, it's £4.50 with free shipping.

Here's Daniel O'Donnell-Smith's account of himself: "Daniel O'Donnell-Smith lives in Leicester but will soon be moving to London to begin a PhD and make electronic mistakes with his dark pop collective @MoscowYouthCult. He loves synths, trashy horror/sci-fi, VHS wonk & cat lick. His first poetry collection is currently available from Leafe Press, entitled 'cOdes'."

Wednesday 5 September 2012

100,000 Poets for Change day of readings in Bath


As part of the international 100,000 Poets for Change, I've organized a day of readings on Saturday, 29 September at Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute on Queen Square, with all money raised going to support Julian House, Bath's charity for the homeless. We'll be in the large Elwin room. Here's the schedule:

2:30-3 p.m. Bath Poetry Cafe, with readings from David Cohen, Teresa Davey, Rose Flint, Rosie Jackson, Jill Sharp and Sue Sims

3:10-3:40 p.m. A Pamphlet Party, with poets reading from their pamphlets: Seren Adams (Small History, Shearsman), David Hale (The Last Walking Stick Factory, Happenstance), Dikra Ridha (There Are No Americans in Baghdad's Bird Market, Tall Lighthouse), and Robert Walton (Waiting for the Wave, Pighog)

3:50-4:20 p.m. Bath Spa University MA Poets Past and Present: Graham Allison, Laura Burns, Matthew Haw, Caroline Heaton, Alan Summers, Natasha Underwood, Andy Wright and several others

4:30-5 p.m. Swindon Artswords Presents, with readings from William Bedford, Emily Harrison, Cristina Newton, Bethany Pope and Hilda Sheehan

5:10-5:40 p.m. Bath Spa University Undergraduates, with readers to be confirmed

Dinner break

7:30-8:15 p.m. Emerging Poets, with readings from David Briggs, Rory Waterman and possibly one other poet to be confirmed

8:30-9:15 p.m. Kelvin Corcoran, Claire Crowther and Tim Liardet 


There will be drinks and books tables throughout the event (manned by Bath Spa student volunteers), and donations will be requested for Julian House. There is no entry fee as such. I am most grateful to Bath Spa University for its support--paying for the room, readers' travel expenses, etc.--so that all donations can go directly to Julian House.

Tuesday 4 September 2012

I Don't Call Myself a Poet: Interviews with Contemporary Poets Living & Working in Britain

As part of her teaching at the University of Middlesex, Sophie Mayer has done a wonderful thing, creating a compendium of interviews with a wide range of UK poets, including, happily, myself. It includes Andrea Brady, Vahni Capildeo, Mimi Khalvati, John Kinsella, Ira Lightman, Chris McCabe, Daljit Nagra, Shazea Quraishi and Jane Yeh--and many more! Apparently the 68 interviews are just the beginning, with more forthcoming. It looks to become a valuable resource for readers and students alike.

Monday 27 August 2012

Laura Kasischke's Space, in Chains (Copper Canyon, 2011)

Winner of the National Book Critics' Circle Award for Poetry, Space, in Chains combines the banal and the metaphysical with surprising effectiveness. I'm especially intrigued by Kasischke's ideas about mortality and death. 



How easy it would have been instead
to stand up shouting
about cold, dumb death.

from "View from Glass Door"


July, that lovely hell, all
velvet dresses and drapes
stuffed into a hot little hole.

opening stanza of "July"


I stumbled into this place with my suitcase packed full of prior obligations. The floor of the orchard littered with soft fruit, and the wasps hovering drunkenly over it all, and the last few pieces dangling from the branches--happiness, melancholy, sexual desire--poised in the vibrating air, ready to fall.

*

In our fading animal memories:

The humming gold of being, and ceasing to be. The exposed motor of eternity.

the beginning and end of "Wasps"


And all the embezzled
cents and dollars
of the last time I saw you.

last stanza of "Rain"


The trees

in their temporary trances, and we in our animate brevity.

from "Medical Dreams"


The last hour waiting patiently on a tray for her somewhere in the future. The spoon slipping quietly into the beautiful soup.

end of "Near Misses"


There is a bridge from here to there. But we all know it is the kind of bridge that blows away. The kind of bridge made mostly of magazines, cheap beer, TV.

from "Riddle"


The way music, our savior, is the marriage of math and antisocial behavior.

from "O Elegant Giant"


And then 
through my weird tears
a clear vision
at the center of the others:

My father 
and the way for decades he drank his beer
beneath our bare bulb in the basement, like

a man desperately struggling to drown

a pale deer slowly in a shallow pond.

end of "Animal, Vegetable, Mineral, Mist"


Most days I cling to a single word. It is a mild-mannered creature made of thought. Future, or Past. Never the other, obvious word. Whenever I reach out to touch that one, it scurries away.

opening stanza of "Riddle"


In the UK you can buy Space, in Chains from Foyle's; in the US, try your local independent.