Reading Guide for How I Learned to Sing

One of the great things about the Read Regional promotion is that every book has a 'Reading Guide' produced - well, produced as a downloadable pdf anyway. You can see mine here and those of the other 10 writers here.

Each consists of an introduction, written by the writer, some questions for discussion by reading groups, or for deep reflection if reading alone, I guess. At least one of the question in my list is a bit sarcastic which gives you a clue that the writers were asked to think of questions. There are also suggestions for further reading - I took this as an opportunity to point people towards anthologies mainly, including some I'd either edited or been anthologised in that people might otherwise not come across.

I've added the introduction as a separate page here, as it seems to work pretty well on its own. If you come up with any particularly insightful, funny or insulting answers to the discussion questions, I'd be very happy to hear them!

Read Regional article in the Bookseller

I was asked to write an op-ed piece for The Bookseller about the Read Regional scheme How I Learned to Sing was selected for. You can read it online here : http://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/reading-regionally.html.

In it I talk about the positive use of public funds, New Writing North's track record of great ideas, and the virtues of libraries as democratic spaces and signs of community health. Hopefully any librarians reading it will feel obliged/encouraged to make sure I have audiences when I turn up at their venues over the next few months. (Tour dates here.)

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.)