The Son, a new, forthcoming pamphlet

I am delighted to say that Oystercatcher Press is going to publish my pamphlet, The Son. If you've heard of Oystercatcher but can't place it, it's probably because they just won the Michael Marks Award for a poetry pamphlet publisher (Americans, for pamphlet read chapbook). 

I hadn't planned on publishing another pamphlet in the UK at the moment (I had a chapbook ms under consideration at a US press and pulled it once this came through--it'll have to wait for another day), but Peter Hughes, editor and publisher of Oystercatcher, asked me to "come aboard," as it were, and I was flattered and honored to accept. 

The Son draws on a book manuscript in progress, Imagined Sons; large selections of its prose poems first appeared in PN Review in 2007 and The Republic of Letters earlier this year. "Birthmother's Catechisms," which also appear in the manuscript and pamphlet, have appeared in New Welsh Review, Stand, and The Times Literary Supplement.

As soon as I have the prospective publication date, I'll happily update this post accordingly.

"The Chorus," a draft of a new poem

written 26 July 09, taken down 31 July 09

Basil Bunting's Complete Poems--The Books of Odes

from The First Book of Odes

I am agog for foam. Tumultuous come

with teeming sweetness to the bitter shore

tidelong unrinsed and midday parched and numb

with expectation. If the bright sky bore

with endless utterance of a single blue

unphrased, its restless immobility

infects the soul, which must decline into

an anguished and exact sterility

and waste away: then how much more the sea

trembling with alteration must perfect

our loneliness by its hostility.

opening lines of 3

Those impatient thighs will be bruised soon enough.

Sniff the sweet narcotic distilled by coupled

skins.

9

He will shrink, his manhood leave him, slough selfaware

the last skin of the flayed: despair.

He will nurse his terror carefully, uncertain

even of death's solace

impotent to outpace

dispersion of the soul, disruption of the brain.

last lines of "10: Chorus of Furies"

Nothing

substance utters or time

stills and restrains

joins design and

supple measure deftly

as thought's intricate polyphonic

score dovetails with the tread

sensuous things

keep in our consciousness.

opening lines of 15

we have the sea to stare at,

its treason, capaciousness, tedium

last lines of 22

                  They say 'Adios!' shyly but look back

more than once, knowing our thoughts

                        and sharing our

                  desires and lack of faith in desire.

last lines of "30: The Orotava Road"

Days now

less bitter than

rind of wild gourd.

Cool breezes. Lips

moistened, there are words.

last lines of 33

from the Second Book of Odes

                                    Must [the girls]

also stop their ears to your tomcat

wailing, a promise your body cannot keep?

4

The breeze she wears

lifts and falls back.

. . .

giggles, ceramic

huddle of notes

10

Basil Bunting's Complete Poems is available from Amazon.co.uk.

Basil Bunting's Complete Poems--Briggflatts

from I

In such soft air

they trudge and sing,

laying the tune frankly on the air

from II

Crew grunt and gasp. Nothing he sees

they see, but hate and serve. Unscarred ocean,

day's swerve, swell's poise, pursuit,

he blends, balances, drawing leagues under the keel

to raise cold cliffs where tides

knot fringes of weed.

from III

Heart slow, nerves numb and memory, he lay

on glistening moss by a spring;

as a woodman dazed by an adder's sting

barely within recall

tests the rebate tossed to him, so he

ascertained moss and bracken,

a cold squirm snaking his flank

and breath leaked to his ear:

I am neither snake nor lizard,

I am the slowworm.

Ripe wheat is my lodging. I polish

my side on pillars of its transept,

gleam in its occasional light.

Its swaying

copies my gait.

...

Sycamore seed twirling,

O, writhe to its measure!

Dust swirling trims pleasure.

Thorns prance in a gale.

In air snow flickers,

twigs tap,

elms drip.

Swaggering, shimmering fall,

drench and towel us all!

So he rose and led home silently through clean woodland

where every bough repeated the slowworm's song.

from IV

I hear Aneurin number the dead and rejoice,

being adult male of a merciless species.

Today's posts are piles to drive into the quaggy past

on which impermanent palaces balance.

...

Clear Cymric voices carry well this autumn night,

Aneurin and Taliesin, cruel owls

for whom it is never altogether dark, crying

before the rules made poetry a pedant's game. 

...

Applewood, hard to rive,

its knots smoulder all day.

from V

Drip--icicle's gone.

Slur, ratio, tone,

chime dilute what's done

as a flute clarifies song,

trembling phrase facing to pause

then glow. Solstice past,

years end crescendo.

...

Mist sets lace of frost

on rock for the tide to mangle.

Day is wreathed in what summer lost.

...

silence by silence sits,

and Then is diffused in Now.

...

Starlight is almost flesh.

...

Furthest, fairest things, stars, free of our humbug,

each his own, the longer known the more alone,

wrapt in emphatic fire roaring out to a black flue.

Each spark trills on a tone beyond chronological compass,

yet in a sextant's bubble present and firm

places a surveyor's stone or steadies a tiller.

Then is Now. The star you steer by is gone,

its tremulous thread spun in the hurricane

spider floss on my cheek; light from the zenith

spun when the slowworm lay in her lap

fifty years ago.

...

Starlight quivers. I had day enough.

For love uninterrupted night.

Bloodaxe's new edition of Briggflatts, including a CD of Bunting's reading of the poem and a DVD film of Bunting, can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk.

Basil Bunting's Complete Poems--Sonatas

Briggflatts is part of the Sonatas but will have its own post.

My tongue is a curve in the ear. Vision is lies.

*

                                    our doom

is, to be sifted by the wind,

heaped up, smoothed down like silly sands.

We are less permanent than thought.

*

precision clarifying vagueness;

boundary to a wilderness

of detail; chisel voice

smoothing the flanks of noise;

catalytic making whisper and whisper

run together like two drops of quicksilver

"Villon"

Out of puff

noonhot in tweeds and gray felt,

tired of appearance and

disappearance;

warm obese frame limp with satiety;

slavishly circumspect at sixty;

he spreads over the ottoman

scanning the pictures and and table trinkets.

(That hand's dismissed shadow

moves through fastidiously selective consciousness,

rearranges pain.)

*

                        In the morning

clean streets welcomed light's renewal,

patient, passive to the weight of buses

thundering like cabinet ministers

over a lethargic populace.

"Attis: Or, Something Missing"

(the first passage is the opening of the poem)

But their determination to banish fools foundered

ultimately in the installation of absolute idiots.

Fear of being imputed

naive impeded thought.

*

Have you seen a falcon stoop

accurate, unforseen

and absolute, between

wind-ripples over harvest? Dread

of what's to be, is and has been--

were we not better dead?

His wings churn air

to flight.

Feathers alight

with sun, he rises where

dazzle rebuts our stare,

wonder our fright.

"The Spoils"

Basil Bunting's Complete Poems (Bloodaxe, 2000) is available at The Book Depository.

Juliana Spahr's Response (Sun and Moon, 1996)

something encloses the impossible in a fable

an unreal world called real because it is so heavily metaphoric

we can't keep our fingers of connection out of it

**

while the end of lunacy in art was explicit in [name of major historical figure]'s rhetoric

while when the nation turns to art, art loses its divergence

**

some co-opt this language and paint a series of meticulous and beautifully colored monumental images of people imprisoned and alone at the edge of a tedious despair

**

rewritten, the goal of the artist is to prevent reality in a true and concrete manner

**

the poverty of image among the people of [name of nation]

the continual increase in the amount of image a viewer can tolerate

**

a voice stutters in the background of our waking mind

[generic possessive pronoun] stutter is our stutter

or is it the way we define our difference?

stutter is nation

"responding"

NOTE This poem draws from an Oprah episode on the case of Ruth Finley, a woman who, because of "dissociative personality disorder," was stalked by a male persona of herself.

**

this is true

a woman calls her stalker The Poet

this is true

a woman describes a stalker in terms that describe herself

this is true

a woman stalked herself to kill herself

this is true

a woman is at times a man

"thrashing seems crazy"

this is about the role of testimony

the claims of truth in the age of cover-up and misinformation

**

attempts at comfort from those without the vocabulary of comfort

"testimony"

when terrible things happen they must be witnesses

**

how much self can be removed and the self remain?

**

the anger is to draw attention to the way anger is a just response to how they will be angry until just witness is begun

**

the futility of screaming at the assistant well represents the futile necessity of anger

"witness"

The SoundEye Poetry Festival, Cork, 11 July 2009--Part 2 of 2

Saturday night's reading at the Eason Hill Community Centre I'd been looking forward to since I knew I'd be attending: Peter Manson, Maggie O'Sullivan, and Tom Raworth. Some years ago I heard Raworth read at Birkbeck College to a packed, hot classroom--and I hung on his every word; but I'd never had the opportunity to hear Manson or O'Sullivan. 

Manson began with a booming rendition of a page of Adjunct, just republished by Barque. The mix of voices and registers impressed and overwhelmed. Next, at an easier pace, Manson read a new prose poem, "My Funeral," which is a single long paragraph giving intricate instructions for the speaker's funeral, to hilarious effect. One great moment was when Manson read, "Put the polished section of Madagascan ammonite I always carry with me into my left-hand front trouser pocket," and then, from the same pocket, drew out the ammonite to show the audience. The hilarity grew as the poem progressed to its unexpected, outlandish conclusion. I'm looking forward to sharing the piece with my Sudden Prose students next year. 

Manson concluded with a draft of a new long poem titled "The Baffle Stage" and with the delightful epigraph from The Fall's lead singer Mark E. Smith, "The fantastic is in league against me." The piece's relentless momentum and range of language give rise to a distinctive, analytical, intelligent contemporary sensibility. Here are a few passages I especially liked; nb, they don't appear continuously in the poem. Thanks to Manson for giving me his reading script, from which I've been able to confirm these are correct and their line breaks.

idiot guarantees of a back-story

no palindrome / but now you're worried

immersive dimplings of the carapace

pneumatic faith

the poem was acquiring language

 Maggie O'Sullivan began her reading with selections from Red Shifts and Waterfalls (both from Etruscan), which together constitute her project, her/story:eye. Her voice lent a musicality to the poems that enhanced their lyricism beautifully. Here are some choice lines (though there may be errors, sorry):

dead shine rook shrill

many a cascade

askew creased it it the echo

thousand feather

sometimes she cries        sometimes she is again

the song-flooded walls the saturated of red

easel wink marine ecstasy

The second part of the reading focused on two apparently uncollected poems, one using words from John Clare and one titled (I believe) "Jugular Parting Wild Horses." These lines are from the former work:

power hardens roughest wave

brokenly tremble how the land is returned

Tom Raworth informed us that he'd be reading 20 new short poems and "a page of old prose," the latter referring to his Equipage pamphlet, There Are Few People Who Put On Any Clothes (starring it). I enjoyed the reading, but found it too fast for my taste. Here are some choice passages:

supple mental flirtation may be behind you

inflexible in acknowledgment of doubt

the placebo send the placebo

wistful anger

80% prefer chips to poetry

bodies on the street I can't be everywhere

history portrayed by life-size working models

looks like we've got brain matter

I am the projection of my reflections

Afterwards we went to Trevor Joyce's home for conversation into the night. Part of what made SoundEye such a good experience was the camaraderie. I drifted from one conversation to another, everyone I spoke to engaged and friendly, no pretentiousness or preciousness.

Tom Raworth, Swantje Lichtenstein, yours truly, and Luke Roberts 

at Trevor Joyce's after the reading

Bring on SoundEye 2010!

Thanks to Tony Frazer for the photo

"The BBC's poetry season was let down by poor production"

I largely agree with this piece on The Guardian's Books Blog by Nathan Hamilton and would be glad to know others' thoughts.

The SoundEye Poetry Festival, Cork, 11 July 2009--Part 1 of 2

The first event I attended on Saturday was a show of sound poetry at St Fin Barre's Cathedral (great for the acoustics) with three performers, Christine Wertheim (Aus/US), Jerome Rothenberg (US), and Jaap Blonk (NI). Wertheim's sound poems worked through the use of different character voices, frequent sonic repetition, with pure sound (as opposed to words) only employed occasionally. The poems tended to circle back to their beginnings with little semantic content but a suggested emotional trajectory. 

Rothenberg began with sound poems by other writers, including Hugo Ball and Kurt Schwitters. In the first work, a short Dadaist piece, Rothenberg used a long piece of neon plastic tubing to create a high-pitched whirring sound when he spun it overhead. Between the device and his declamatory delivery, his performance was, for me, reminiscent of Ginsberg. 

Rothenberg's final piece was his own "translation"; here is his account of it: "In '17 Horse-Sons of Frank Mitchell'--from traditional sources in Navajo--I engaged for a number of years in what I was calling 'total translation,' going beyond the semantic level of the words to try to find equivalents for the non-lexical vocables in Navajo song & even one step further, for the music--the melodies--by which the words & sounds were carried. The resultant pieces when performed, for single voice or with multiple chanters/performers, created a new sound poetry both faithful to & totally divergent from its original source. The relation to soundings in our own time & place is also worth noting." In performance the "horse-songs" were nuanced and engaging.

Then came the pièce de résistance, Jaap Blonk, who gave an impressive selection of the range of his work. He began with a new translation of one of his Dutch sound poems into English, "Sound," a work of intelligent, jubilant play, a look of delight recurring on Blonk's expressive face. He followed this with a "phonetic etude" to the letter R, a continuous performance of its range of possible sounds or pronunciations. I couldn't help but smile and laugh in the pleasure and play of Blonk's inventiveness; he has a magisterial vocal flexibility that is impossible to imagine without hearing it for yourself.

Blonk's next three pieces were in an invented language he calls the language of the Underlands--a parallel, he says, to the language of the Netherlands, incorporating Dutch accents, dialects, and suggestions of particular social situations. Perhaps the most delightful was "The Underlands Drinking Song," during which Blonk stumbled this way and that down the centre aisle in the course of his performance; I was sorry when it came to an end. 

The sixth piece was another English translation, "Let's Go Out." As with the drinking song, the performance was not just of Blonk's face and vocal cords but his whole body. There were some lyrically inventive phrases and lines in the piece, including "ravenhorn," "thunder mole," "mist guide," and "was this quiet or was it just misquiet." The final two pieces were Hugo Ball's sound poem, "Lament for the Dead" (1916), and a "Dutch bebop tune," "Oblibumbop" (I'm guessing at the spelling!). If he hadn't ended by wandering off, making the end of the piece uncertain and thus dissipating the last of its energy, I'd have been on my feet in the applause. I can't imagine how it could have been any better: a perfect performance. 

Photo by Tony Frazer. Thanks too to Wurm im Apfel's Kit Fryatt and Dylan Harris for making the recording of Jaap Blonk's performance at their series in Dublin several days prior to Blonk's appearance in Cork.

The SoundEye Poetry Festival, Cork, 9-10 July 2009

I spent the weekend at the SoundEye poetry festival in Cork and, having had a marvelous time, thought I'd review a few of its events here. For those of you unfamiliar with the festival, it's devoted to alternative poetries without advocating a single school, as the founder Trevor Joyce's history explains, and it's been running since 1997. 

I flew in on Thursday afternoon, missing the first day and a half of events but making it to the evening event, the SoundEye Cabaret, including poets, performance art, music, etc. Early on, a couple of individual performances were disappointingly poor (fortunately I don't know the criminals by name), but the quality picked up as the programme progressed. My favourite performance would have to be a performance art/poetry piece by the young Sam Forsyte, formerly of Cork and now resident in Frankfurt. Apparently it was videotaped, so as soon as I have a clip or a link, I'll post it here. I also enjoyed the performance group Boiled String, whose three readers performed John Goodby's cut up of Dylan Thomas's work as well as a Lynette Roberts poem, with a double bassist plucking away in the background. 

On Friday afternoon Kevin Perryman (Ire/Ger), publisher, translator, and poet, Michael Smith (Ire), poet and translator, Swantje Lichtenstein (Ger), poet, and Stephen Rodefer (US), poet and translator, read. Perryman's work bordered on and at times transgressed into a sentimentality reminiscent of southwest American spiritual poetry, with such lines as "the rain won't talk to the mountain" and "never again to hold your hand." Michael Smith divided his time between his translations from Spanish, beginning with several excellent poems by Vallejo, and his own work. He seemed more confident with the translations, as when he read his own poems he sped up to the point of losing some of the nuanced interpretive tones that marked his earlier reading. 

Swantje Lichtenstein proved a revelation. Assuming I can trust the translations, Lichtenstein is a compelling and original poet; I dearly hope a book of her work in English will appear soon. Rodefer ended the set with brusque, vigorous poems that vividly mixed registers, moving deftly amid hackneyed expressions, abstractions, images, etc. with frequent semantic and sonic wordplay. 

That night at Meade's Bar there was a packed open mic, with Mairead Byrne as an ideal emcee. Delights included Kit Fryatt's passionate performance of the original and her translation of an Anglo Saxon work, "Wulf": "It was easy to sunder / what was never together"; and what was the name of the piece Peter Manson delivered so commandingly? 

(Tomorrow I'll continue with reviews of some of Saturday's events.)

"The Mole" by Ben Wilkinson

Ben Wilkinson's first pamphlet, The Sparks, has been published as part of Tall Lighthouse Press's Pilot initiative for poets under 30. It can be ordered directly from Tall Lighthouse. 

The Mole

In the same way that the stone rolled back

from the cave and the grave-clothed

Lazarus emerged, the earth burst

into mounds on the garden, hunks of turf

disturbed by the seemingly dormant

deep-now-surface diggings of it,

boar or sow. Unmovable, unbiddable

by spade or shout: my father and I

watched from the window, dry-brown

heaps churning gently out; blinking,

aerating and tilling the mineral-dead layers

of blank soil, opening up to a sudden downpour. 

Ben Wilkinson

"The Mole" first appeared in The Times Literary Supplement.

Kristiina Ehin's The Drums of Silence (trans. Ilmar Lehtpere)

Translated from Estonian, The Drums of Silence won The Poetry Society's Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation in 2007. The book can be purchased from Amazon.co.uk. Thanks to George Ttoouli for introducing me to Ehin's work.

you learn a foreign language

and chirp the dark sap of your feelings out

but the tall trees of my childhood

have rolled up their swings

and are fleeing for the sea

"Come what will"

the stars crackle

like fires on marsh islands

"your heart falls into my lap"

the moon is making a heavy rope

from the hair of a corpse

and is coming

down

tonight

"the moon howls"

a good man

puts a woman out to grow like woundwort

*

long so long are the years

but

life is fleeting

"woman of gold"

what are we to believe then

here in this land of tree worshippers

where the pulpits still flow with spilt blood

blood

the tree gods were without

last stanza of "the afternoon sun..."

the time is at hand

when you dance your ungainly dance

rub your hips against your shadow

*

the time is at hand

when the iron door of your heart is open

earthen tiles will not burn

the handrail will not waver

you can see what mineral you're made of

what plain water

what rarefied air

"the time is at hand"

fidelity--rough as a man's cheek

raw meet that draws you close

a trail that remains

a trail that can't be abandoned

last stanza of "I smell you at the crossroads..."

our mouths close

innocence and death

tremble in my nostrils

innocence and death

vibrate in your fingers

*

two days later we were suddenly superfluous

our glances strayed along the muddy town

soaked through

we sat in the snack bar

and didn't see through each other's city faces

"on the way to Siberia"

magnanimous night

the gentle fever of sweet scent

in your hair

opening of "magnanimous night"

woods barren of berries and mercies

"it is a time you can see"

...thoughts those free elusive

swallows

fly hither and thither

looking for food from feelings

"to walk and to walk my own road"

the steep shores of sincerity

"down below the city growls"

I paid and went

in dream's muddy buses

no notion of waking

no fear of inspection

the last stanza of "in a dream"

the day lingers

and it's gone

suddenly even the maps are frozen solid

the last stanza of "fog appears imperceptibly"

icicles drip and

the hall door is open

so we can cry

our laughter out

spring came

over our feathered shoulders

and our hearts were kindled aflame like

cleansing spring fires

"man and bird"

dreams are like deer

shy and self-contained

I am a hunter on the foggy shore of dreams

a hunter who never takes aim

but never takes

her eyes off

first stanza of "dreams are like deer"

"Heroin Song 2"

Removed on 8 July

Roy Fisher's The Thing About Joe Sullivan: Poems 1971-1977

Into the purpose: or out.

There is only, without a tune.

timelessness of desire.

*

What's now only disproved

was once imagined.

first and last stanzas of "Timelessness of Desire"

The light is in the earth if anywhere. This is already the place where it was. We've hardly started, and I want to do it again.

last stanza of "At Once"

Beyond him

a dissolution of my darkness

into such forms

as live there in the space

beyond the clear image of an owl:

forms without image;

pointless to describe.

*

I saw what there was to write and I wrote it.

When it felt what I was doing, it lay down and died under me.

*

The kites are the best sort of gods,

mindless, but all style;

even their capriciousness,

however dominant,

not theirs at all.

*

The pilgrim disposition--

...

domestic to-ing and fro-ing

uncoiled and elongated 

in a dream of purpose.

*

Everything still along its level

except the middle zone, the harbour water,

turbulent with the sunlight

even in calm air.

"Diversions"

Instead there is blankness

and there is grace:

the insistence of the essential,

the sublime made lyrical

at the loss of what's forgotten.

last two stanzas of "Some Loss"

On a ground remarkable for lack of character, sweeps of direction form.

first stanza of "A Poem Not a Picture"

                                      I can

compare what I like to the salts,

to the pot, if there's a pot,

to the winter if there's a winter.

The salts I can compare

to anything there is.

Anything.

last two stanzas of "The Only Image"

If you're living

any decor

can make a wraith of you.

last stanza of "Corner"

                  --the turn

where here and there

change places, the moment

always a surprise: 

on an ordinary day a brief,

lightness, charm between realities;

on a good day, a break

life can flood in and fill.

*

Getting home--getting home somehow,

late, late and small.

*

The cemetery's a valley

of long grass set with marble,

separate as a sea.

*

the din compelling

but irrelevant

has the effect of a silence

*

Travesties of the world

come out of the fog

and rest on the boundary.

"Handsworth Liberties"

Whose is the body you

remember in yourself?

*

The light. The rain. The eye. The rainbow--

horizons form, random and inevitable as rainbows

over bright fields of change.

"Inscriptions for Bluebeard's Castle"

Horizons release skies. 

*

After a fair number of years the distasteful aspects of the whole business became inescapable. Our frustrations will die with us, their particular qualities unsuspected. Or we can make the concrete we're staring at start talking back.

"Rules and Ranges for Ian Tyson"

                             Even

love's not often a poem.

"Of the Empirical Self and For Me"

It was still the same sunless afternoon,

no north or south anywhere in the sky.

*

                                    Some things

are lying in wait in the world, 

walking about in the world,

happening when touched, as they must.

"Staffordshire Red"