Review of Read Regional reading

It's not often you get a review for a reading, but there was a very nice one done of the Read Regional event as part of Durham Book Festival, by Alex Opie in The Bubble. This discussed all the readings in what was, as s/he points out, a quick 30 minutes, by myself, Tara Bergin and Cara Brennan. Here's the part about my reading:

The final poet of the afternoon, Mark Robinson, read from his collection How I Learned to Sing. It is a collection about the “cultural and industrial transformation of the North of England” and this therefore makes Robinson the most obviously “regional” of all three poets. Never one to avoid a good pun, Robinson created his own version of the Bohemian Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke’s Duino Elegies,but instead colloquially entitled them The Dunno Elegies. The poem that would naturally lend itself best to a Durham Book Festival reading is a musing on the historic city itself, and Robinson successfully fused Durham’s rich history with his own poetic style. He presented a vivid picture of the “earth-bound angels” that “throng the bridges” and the all-too-familiar notion of being given “a lecture in rhetoric.”

As well as these topographical works, what makes Robinson’s writing so unexpectedly brilliant is his ability to turn from what one would consider conventional aestheticism but to still create something ultimately beautiful. In How I Learned to Sing, the audience are presented with the striking image of “the snag of mishaps” that has “shaped mum’s face into a taut parody of itself.” Yet, as Robinson read aloud, you could understand how his writing is not intended for the academics; instead he is writing for, not, as his poem exclaims, the “real birds” with “real blood”, but the “real people” with “real heritage.”

Reviews, Readings and Reading Regional

REVIEWS:
I've added a Reviews page to this site, and will add to it as the reviews roll in, as they no doubt will. (He said confidently.) There was a nice long, interesting and interested review by Greg Freeman on Write Out Loud which you can read in full here. I couldn't help but laugh at the way not being in Poetry Review is a good thing, although I'm not sure my poems are as plain as they may appear. They aren't very elusive, I agree, but there are a lot of allusions in them, some deeper down than others. There are two in the football poems Greg quotes, for instance. Anyway, I'm glad he seemed to have enjoyed the book, and knows his football!

I also remembered another short review in July's edition of Culture magazine, and found some really nice comments on Anthony Wilson's 'Poems That Saved My Life' blog. I'm not sure quoting something which calls me 'hugely underrated' falls under bragging or complaining, though, to use a phrase I used in 'If I said I was reading' which was discussed recently on Twitter by Oliver Mantell in his @IrregularMargin guise. (Captured in the picture above.)

READINGS:
I will be performing with Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby (feeling like the Des O'Connor to their Morecambe and Wise?) at the exciting sounding Jabberwocky Market festival in Darlington on Sunday 6 October. If you're around Darlington - only 2 and a bit hours from London Village - it'd be good to see you. There are 3 short performance during the afternoon, with theatre scratch schows in between.

I will also be performing on the last day of the Durham Book Festival, at 12.30 at Clayport Library in the centre of Durham, with Cara Brennan and Tara Bergin. There are other writers there during the day, including the fantastic Andrew Crumey after we three poets.

READ REGIONAL:
Cara, Tara and I are the three poets on the list of selected writers/books for the 2013/14 Read Regional campaign, working with libraries and readers across the North East and Yorkshire. The Durham event is a sneak preview for events which will mainly take place next year. All the writers recently did short readings for a roomful of librarians and reader development specialists, some of whom had been up since Daft O'Clock. Fine for me to go last out of 11 then...

Actually, we all enjoyed doing that, and meeting each other, it was the 'having our photos took' bit we all pretended to really not enjoy. Anyway, next year I'm looking forward to getting out and about as part of the project, which is produced by New Writing North with Arts Council support. There's even going to be a 'Readers Group Guide' style thing for the book, which is exciting. More on this soon!

A review!

First proper review of How I Learned to Sing was spotted yesterday, in The Crack magazine, North East England's longest-running listings and culture magazine. You can read it in full here on their rather nifty website. Here's some (most) of it...

'And what a fabulous collection it is, an unpretentious examination of art and life in general with his role at the Arts Council naturally informing his worldview (“I could be sticking words to beats somewhere near Boyana / Instead of playing jargon bingo eating a banana”). Clear-eyed and rooted in reality (he’s not afraid to reference Sky Sports, The Lion King and Kafka) and with a finely honed sense of social justice and sparky wit this is a collection that is rich with biographical detail. And he gives just as much weight to the little moments in life, which speak just as loudly as the big stuff.'

I'm pleased with that, though a bit puzzled by the Lion King thing, as I don't recall deliberately making one. I did watch the video a lot when the kids were little though so maybe it snook in somehow. Anyway, hakuna matata. 

And I'm pleased it doesn't say 'autobiographical detail' too.

Heads Up

The  film above was made recently by Sarah Pickthall and Abbie Norris as part of a series called Heads Up as part of Arts Council England's Creative Case for Diversity. It features a few bits of my poetry, and some extracts from a performance of poems from The Dunno Elegies sequence in How I Learned to Sing.  

Colin Hambrook, editor of  www.disabilityartsonline.org.uk wrote a blog about the film which interestingly (for me at least) very much picks up on the connections between my poems and the other ideas in the film. Never has so much connection between my work and William Blake been made! But, seriously, as I thought about it, I realise Colin is spot in saying ‘For Robinson adapting to the world as it happens is a process of looking for the bigger picture in the detail’, and not just in my poetry but throughout my ‘thinking practice.’

I was pleased that the diversity of my own practice was built into their vision – including my poetry practice. (Thanks to Arc for letting us film a performance in their studio, by the way.) The bridges of Stockton come out of it well, as does the industrial imagery of Teesside, and there’s even a walk-on part for our cat, playing herself. Those who stay to the end will notice the soundtrack is music I made myself (not for this specifically, but for the poetry performance you see a glimpse of), and I will admit to being very pleased how that sounds. 

Ready to sing: book launches (after short nightmare)

 

This is a reminder about my book launches... but first a little story. Everything was going swimmingly-but-time-consumingly (200 pages takes ages to proof-read, and it had to be done several times, I'd set up the podcasts etc) until a couple of weeks ago. 

Smokestack Books (which sounds like a small corporation but is in actual fact the poet Andy Croft) were expecting delivery of the books, I was excited to pick them up. Then they didn't arrive. Never mind, they'll be there Tuesday, after the Bank Holiday, we thought. 

But they weren't. Phone calls revealed the printer was about to go into administration and nothing could be despatched, even though paid for, until that was clear, if at all. The company has now, sadly, ceased trading, with a warehouse full of books. Smokestack had 2 titles in the warehouse waiting to be sent out - my own and Gerda Stevenson's If This Were Real. Andy expects to get these, eventually, but we have had to retrieve a few copies which had got out - 1 box sent to the bookshop distributor, though most had already gone to bookshops to fulfil orders - and get a short emergency print run done to cover the launch period. This has meant a lot of brain stress and extra expense for Smokestack. (Not currently receiving any funding by the way.) 

Anyway, I have now held copies in my hand, and can safely remind about/alert you to a couple of events next week to launch this book - Monday 10 June, 7pm at the Green Room in the Green Dragon Studios in Stockton, and Wednesday 12 June, 6pm at the Lit and Phil Library in Newcastle. (More details here.) 

If any of you are in the area, it'd be great to see you. Both events are free, though do email the Lit and Phil to confirm a place. If not, why not do yourself and Smokestack a favour by buying a copy direct from their website, or another of their very fine titles. (One is by Superman's dad. Well, Christopher Reeves' dad anyway.) 

You can also listen to me read some of the poems in a couple of downloadable podcasts I've done, which can be found here.(There are more to follow, too.)

A Reader's Life

 

I recently agreed to write a ‘Readers Lives’ column for the Journal’s Culture magazine. This is a kind of literary equivalent of Desert Island Discs – 6 books that have been important to you in your life. Sounds like fun, I thought… 

Then it all went a bit like that part in Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity where Rob can’t decide on his favourite songs. I decided to rule out novels, to make it a bit easier. I toyed with the idea of restricting choices to poetry. Then I thought be a bit broader than that but would also rule out non-fiction expect to do with music and the arts. I spent an age looking at my book shelves. Then another 2 ages writing a long list and then a short list. Then I decided to write it very quickly and forget about it. Then I took out '10 years in an open necked shirt' by John Cooper Clarke and put ‘Lipstick Traces’ in and pressed send before I could change my mind.  

Those of you lucky enough to live in North East England can pick up a copy of the Culture magazine in many arts venues, cafes, pubs and other cultural spaces. Those of you not so fortunate continue reading, or click here and proceed to page 11 to find out which 6 books I went for in the end, or click on the picture above for a larger version. I do recommend reading the whole issue though – lots of coverage for Festival of the North East. 

What I wrote: 

Lipstick Traces by Greil Marcus 
I had my life changed by punk and post-punk, being 13 in 1977. (I distinctly remember seeing Magazine on Top of the Pops and discussing Howard Devoto with a friend the next day, after Games. From there it was a slippery slope to being that archetypal 6th former with Jean Paul Sartre in the pocket of my baggy overcoat. Lipstick Traces is a tour-de-force of intellectual join-the-dots that explains quite why I was so utterly changed. He connected DaDa and the Cabaret Voltaire, the Situationists, Sex Pistols, Gang of Four, and lots more, to much older traditions of rebellion and counter-culture. This book is a whole education in itself. For better or worse, it’s deep in my intellectual DNA. 

The Penguin Book of Socialist Poetry edited by Alan Bold (Penguin) 
I bought this book from a second-hand stall in the Student Union at Liverpool University, where I studied in the stormy mid 80s. It introduced me to an international range of poets including Latin Americans like Pablo Neruda and Cesar Vallejo, and a generation of great Eastern European poets such as Miroslav Holub, one of only two poets I’ve ever consciously asked to sign their books. What I loved was the way it shows political commitment could come across in accessible but not dumb verse, not be a matter of agreeing or not – that a poem could be an experience. Years later I was proud to be in an anthology of British Socialist Poetry co-edited by one of my heroes from this book, Adrian Mitchell. 

Poetry With An Edge edited by Neil Astley (Bloodaxe) 
Bloodaxe is one of the North East’s greatest cultural powers, and this was the first anthology of theirs I bought, a year or two out of University and starting to learn what writing and reading were really all about. (The Eng.Lit bit of my degree had singularly failed to teach me that.) I found so many poets through this book – from Ken Smith to Simon Armitage before his first book. I started a poetry magazine and press, Scratch, partly inspired by Bloodaxe’s example that poetry could be in and of the world. Neil’s intro even had a few hints of how to do it. The title always summed up what I aspired to in poetry – not just ideas, or feeling, but edge. Later, when I worked at Northern Arts and Arts Council, it was a privilege to support Bloodaxe. 

Selected Poems – Kenneth Koch (Carcanet) 
The other person I asked to sign his books was the great New York poet Kenneth Koch. He signed this book in the back of my car, on the way to Darlington railway station, after he had read in Stockton, one of the first readings I organised when we moved to Teesside in 1993. I love the humour and exuberant life in Koch’s work, the love of art and people, the friendships. I could also have picked his textbook-cum-mini-anthology Making Your Own Days, one of the best books for any aspiring poet to read. 

The Long and the Short of It by Roy Fisher (Bloodaxe) 
Roy Fisher is arguably the greatest living English poet. He was a model for my attempts to reflect real life and places in a non-naturalistic way, playing with realistic ways of talking about my life that are not quite realistic and thus capture some of a sense of life just out of reach. (That’s just me that feels like that? Ok...) He has a fascination with place and a penchant for stray humour I also share. I’ve never accepted that poetry couldn’t be deadly serious and funny and stretching and simply pleasurable at the same time, though I’m not sure I’ve achieved it very often – yet. 

Bringing It All Back Home by Ian Clayton (Route) 
This is simply the best book about music in a life that I’ve ever read, describing the many roles it can play and the many journeys it can take you on. It’s also about growing up and older in a small town, families and what can happen to them. It’s funny and full of feeling but never sentimental, and still had me sobbing at the end. My poems contain a lot of references to music, although the title of my new book, How I Learned To Sing, is a little misleading, as the poem is ostensibly about me turning into a seagull, rather than vocal lessons.

The sound of my own voice

The amount of times you read poems in the course of getting a book ready for publication is underestimated in the public imagination. You think you have finished writing them, having worked on them for anything between, oh, 20 minutes and 15 years, and edited, revised, sorted, revised a multitude of times, and then you have to proof read the book.

Now, I am a self-confessed terrible prof-roader. When I published the last issue of Scratch, the magazine I edited between 1989 and 1997, I put the name as SCARTCH on the cover as a deliberate homage/penance to all the fine writers that had suffered at my hands/eyes. (Matthew Sweeney told me he thought it was probably a better name, and he was probably right.) I put it down to being a Grauniad reader for too long.

Of course, even proof-reading throws up further corrections and amendments. We also had to decide how to handle the poems with longer lines - indents, shortening the lines even, bigger pages. (Smokestack's format is relatively small, which I rather like as it makes the pocket-sized, in comparision with my last publisher Flambard, who went for larger than normal which meant line-length wasn't an issue.) In the end we went for a combination of indents, 'stepping' one poem a la WC Williams, and one or two tight margins. That seemed to draw less attention than an unusually shaped book, as I don;t consider myself a 'long-lined poet', like CK Williams for instance.

After all that proof-reading I needed a break from these poems, but have just spent some time recording some for some 'podcast'-style 15-20 minute readings you can listen to or download here. This means listening to me reading them a lot, in the edit. So I am a little tired of the sound of my own voice right now. But hopefully you won't be.

You can find the first podcast - poems from the title sequence of How I Learned To Sing here. or just go to the new podcast page of the site. More to come.

By the way, you can now order the book direct from Smokestack - they pay all their taxes so far a I know, and if they offshore anything it'll probably be in Greece or Albania or somewhere that needs the help. (That was a joke if HMRC are reading.) It'll be ready any day now - which is very exciting.