Naming the Beasts

A Snowboy Christmas Stocking

2011-12-24T05:29:00.000-08:00

Book Launch @ The Crooked Book, 23.11.11
ft. Andrew McMillan, Ira Lightman, Mark Burnhope

Video: Andrew McMillan

Video: Ira Lightman

1
2
3
4

Video: Mark Burnhope

Emoliage
The Ideal Bed
To My Familiar, Queequeg
Dream Invertebration
The Well and the Ceiling Rose, The Snowboy and Shinglehenge

The Snowboy Virtual Tour (so far)
1. Peony Moon (breaking the ice)
2. Days of Roses - 15th August 2011
3. Sikworms Ink - 17th August 2011
4. Robert Peake (part 1) - 22nd August 2011
5. Robert Peake (part 2) - 23rd August 2011
6. Every-ist and Every-ism - 22nd August 2011
7. Tony Williams - 5th September 2011
8. Miso Sensitive - 7th September 2011
9. Peony Moon (conversation with Claire Trevien) - 2nd September 2011
10. Polyolbion - 10th October 2011
11. The Poetry School - 15th December 2011

The Snowboy Reviewed and Rated

@ Raw Light
@ Sphinx
Sabotage 2011 Top Ten

The Snowboy Competition

The snow has started falling in various places across the UK, which has got my noggin working. Here's what I'm thinking: some of you -- wherever you are in the world -- will be building snowmen, snowwomen, snowboys, snowgirls. If you do, please send me a picture of your creation for this blog. I'll put all the pictures I receive up here. At the end of January (probably, I'm not that organised and it depends how many arrive), we'll have something of a gallery of them. I will choose a favourite, with the help of a specially-appointed second judge. The creator of that favourite will receive a signed copy of The Snowboy, along with some related illustration work that I have yet to create (if you want to get an idea of my visual art, there's a few pieces way back in the Naming The Beasts archives). So go on, get posting your Snowman pictures to me on markburnhope@hotmail.co.uk.

Disclaimer: if they must be old ones, last year's, that's fine; I'm hardly going to know. But please don't just put 'Snowman' into Google Images. Any images which I think aren't original to you might go up here, for a laugh, but they won't be judged the winner, which means that you won't get any of my artwork to put up in your house. You won't be laughing then...

Entries So Far...
Marion McCready

Jenni Pasco

Dan Wyke

(This entry has been deemed unfit for public viewing. Send me an entry for the competition, and I'll e-mail it to you if 1) you're not of a sensitive disposition, 2) you ask nicely, and 3) you like funny things.)

The Snowboy Competition

2011-12-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

The snow has started falling in various places across the UK, which has got my noggin working. Here's what I'm thinking: some of you -- wherever you are in the world -- will be building snowmen, snowwomen, snowboys, snowgirls. If you do, please send me a picture of your creation for this blog. I'll put all the pictures I receive up here. At the end of January (probably, I'm not that organised and it depends how many arrive), we'll have something of a gallery of them. I will choose a favourite, with the help of a specially-appointed second judge. The creator of that favourite will receive a signed copy of The Snowboy, along with some related illustration work that I have yet to create (if you want to get an idea of my visual art, there's a few pieces way back in the Naming The Beasts archives). So go on, get posting your Snowman pictures to me on markburnhope@hotmail.co.uk.

Interview and Review

2011-12-16T01:11:00.000-08:00

As it says on the tin, I have two things for you this morning. The first is a lovely recent review of The Snowboy on Jane Holland's blog Raw Light. I'm grateful to her for being bang-on in so many of her thoughts and comments, and for giving me some advice to go forward with. The second thing to show you is a short chat (well, 'short' by my standards) that I had with The Poetry School. Two poems from The Snowboy sprung from prompts given to me by Andrew Philip, on his TPS course on Form and Structure. So for those reasons, it was great to chat with them after the fact, and (in too few words) express my appreciation.

Showing your Working-out: workshopping laid bare

2011-12-14T04:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finished an enjoyable Seven / Seven, the last of the year, and my first for even longer. I haven't played Sevens for a good while, partly because my poem-a-day muscles have seriously lacked exercise, and also because I've repeatedly chickened out. Writing a poem a day for seven days -- let alone for an entire month, for April's NaPoWriMo -- seems like near-madness now, and the results almost embarrassing, whereas I used to relish it, back when I thought that all that bled from my pen was pure gold. Anyway, look down there. I have a few things I can work from here, I think, and I also think I'll play Sevens again in January. Feel free to join me, if you fancy it.

Finally, it's been good (and terrifying) to show you, the reader, the whole process. It has meant me swallowing some pride, and being willing to screw up every so often: the shine has once again been taken off the notion of 'Poetry', and the game has reminded me to scrape it back and remember why I started scribbling poems in the first place, years before I became a slave to the computer (I can hardly write without it anymore). I have been showing my working-out, like a good little mathematics pupil. I hated maths in school, so it pains me to say it, but I'm sure all this was the reason my maths teacher insisted that we handed in our botched bits, rubbings, scribblings-out, strike-throughs, along with our finished work. Back then, I didn't get it. I wondered why I couldn't just hand in the answers when they were done (if they were done at all, because I sometimes managed to sleep at my desk without being disturbed). But I get it now. Indeed, process is an arform in itself, as conceptual art is reminding us all the time. Music as well: everyone has, I think, heard at least some of the demos / b-sides / studio rejects from their favourite bands. We're not always going to like these musical messes, and they'll sometimes award us with nothing more than a good laugh, but that is never the point. Also (and I know it's a cliche), showing your working-out keeps you humble, and opens you up to further growth. Of course, it can also look unprofessional, but if you've made it this far, you'll join me in saying balls to that.

In that spirit, here's a confession: two of these Sevens poems didn't exactly fit the brief. One of them is a draft I've been throwing around, trying to beat into submission, for... a long time (I won't tell you which it is, just that the title has already changed since I posted the draft you see here). The other was written with a second pair of eyes, and a skilled pair of scissor-hands (all the better to cut the crap with...). That poem is 'Adam and Eve It', and my collaborator was Ira Lightman. Being a conceptual / experimental poet who is also passionate about mathematics, Ira has, since I've known him, helped me to be less embarrassed about showing the working-out (even as part of the aesthetics of the poem itself; uncertainty is, I think, something to utilise even in finished pieces). Sharing this poem with Ira on Facebook, and asking him to do his worst on it, led to the following exchange. I share it with you here in full -- including an early draft riddled with problems -- in the spirit of showing my working-out, and not being afraid of the embarrassing bits. If you learn something from the process (for instance, how to lay irony on with a trowel), then great. If not, just enjoy the voyeuristic element -- because, well, I would.

------
MB:

Hi Ira. Question: is this any good?

The Prosaic Law

Adam, before half a wishbone,
was an androgyne, yes. But
you know the rainbow
God whipped out after the flood
cannot be said to bend
over the LGBT, hermeneutically.

Adam formed of dust,
humanity restarted
after a redraft:
both Prosaic Law, not
your quasi-genre, poetry,
hence not open to just
any interpretation.

Try this:

After Snake was cursed, Adam and Eve,
others, such as Shadrach,
Meshach and Abdednego
commenced shadow-play behind a sheet,
partied through the millennia frivolously.

They’re still here, in you and I,
taking Brighton Pier Theatre by monsoon.
Do not drink their poison; run for shelter from
their venomous agenda. Men can make a meal
of the word, remember. Male and Female cuts
like Knife and Fork. Fabulous places open after dark.

IL:

Hmmm, I'm not on first reading keen. I like the rhyme of wishbone and androgyne. I love the line "Male and Female cuts / like Knife and Fork." And I like the sonorous list of
Shadrach, Meshach and Abdednego.

But I am left cold by most of the remainder. I can't get enough narrative, and every line is said in a rephrased way and quite knowingly. I want a more direct narrative and declaration, really.

MB:

Hmm... OK, fair enough. So it reads as if I'm deliberately taking the mickey, and you want to just more simply narrate it without the sarcastic affectations.

IL:

Perhaps yes. I hadn't heard them properly as sarcasm but yes straight into sarcasm is what's bothering me.

MB:

Any better? Another option for a title is 'I Don't Idiom and Eve It'

The Prosaic Law

Adam, before half
a wishbone, was an androgyne.
But the rainbow
God unfurled after the flood
can't be said to cover
the queer, logistically.

Humanity made of soil,
restarted after a redraft:
both Prosaic Law
hence, not open to just
any interpretation. Try this:

After Snake was cursed, Adam and Eve,
others, such as Shadrach,
Meshach and Abednego
commenced shadow-play behind a sheet,
played through the millennia frivolously.

They’re still here, taking Brighton
Palace Pier Theatre by monsoon.

Do not drink their poison; run for shelter
from their agenda. Men can make a meal
of the Word, remember. Male and Female
cuts like Knife and Fork. Fabulous places
open after dark.

IL:

Why is it about idiom and prose when it's such an important subject as sexism and homophobia in the Christian church? I think (as often) the fidgetting about form could be taken out.

IL (fiddles with my poem, unbeknownst to me):

Adam, before the difference of half
a wishbone, was an androgyne.
Before Noah, no rainbow, fun-
damentalists insist. Run

for shelter from their agenda. Remember
Men can make a meal of the Word. Male and Female
cuts like knife with fork.

MB (slightly mortified that my poem is so much smaller):

OK, I see what you mean. The 'Prosaic Law' stuff is meant to mimic the 'Mosaic Law', which of course contains the Levitical prohibitions against homosexuality. Theologically, conservatives are often arguing that you can't take poetic liberties with commands -- hence not open to any interpretation, etc.

IL:

I'm just suggesting some weak parts. I don't see that it's half a wishbone that makes Adam not an androgyne. I think much of the middle part is off the subject. Shadrach, Meshach and Abdednego have nothing to do with snakes, why them and not other Biblical characters? Why change the subject to fire which you do by invoking them? The prosaic stuff is about your general approach, in which case make a much longer piece, and make this an episode of it.

MB:

Yes, all very good points. So cut all this down to its essentials, and use the prosaic vs. the poetic / imaginative as a possible way of making this longer.

IL:

And you've made the case against literalists and fundamentalists before, hence I preferred to edit it as light and cutting. And introducing the rainbow when discussing Eden is tricky too, as there are not supposed to be rainbows before Noah.

MB:

Indeed, and I don't want to state the obvious either, which makes this kind of poem kind of scary... Theologically, the androgyny stuff is something which conservatives think they can refute fairly easily. So does a weak theological argument (I don't think it is, by the way) equal a weak poetic idea?

IL:

I like the way it is mostly eating metaphors now, wishbone and making a meal of the Word.

MB:

Yup.

IL:

And nuts to conservatives. I'm persuaded Adam could be thought of that way. (Also, between you and me, the over sarcastic tone made you sound like you might be a Christian who doesn't like gays.)

MB:

DID IT? Oh dear. Well, that's a constant worry when I'm trying to get close to the bone. So to speak.

As for seeing Adam that way, yes, another thing I've been looking at a bit is Jewish mysticism. That, in part, is where queer theology tends to find that androgyny instead of the strict male / female dichotomy which is famously 'biblical'.

IL:

I think it's hard to mention the rainbow without mentioning Noah. I do think mentioning the rainbow is vital, the colour and strangeness of it, and it expresses pro-Gay feeling, and it also hints at the deep meaning that underneath the flag of difference we are all the same and Christians need to take down their own divisions, and stop pretending to be so WASP and unqueer.

Well, I love Jewish mysticism; Judeo-Christianity is where it's at. Can't come to the Father except through the Son, and can't come to the Son except through the Father.

MB:

I love the idea from queer theory that we're all 'queer', and that the only people who have made a choice are those who have decided to be straight, over and above anything else. Everyone else just likes what they like and isn't so obsessed with defining it. I like that idea.

IL:

I do too. And you're working towards it in the poem. But you're a bit hampered, like you're not quite getting jiggy enough with it, and still a bit too accommodating to the conservatives.

MB:

Bugger. Heh.

IL:

So get jiggy.

MB (after some getting jiggy):

OK, so I've only changed one linebreak, making the stanzas almost mirror each other, lineation-wise. That's it.

Adam, before the difference
of half a wishbone, was an androgyne. Before Noah

[new linebreak]

no rainbow, fun-
damentalists insist. Run
for shelter from their agenda. Remember
men can make a meal of the Word. Male and Female
cuts like knife with fork.

MB (breaking a nerve-wracking silence):

Any idea for a title? 'Marginal Jottings' or something...

IL:

Nooooooo.
Stop writing titles about WRITING.

"Adam and Eve it"?

MB:

Haha -- OK.

Yes, I like 'Adam and Eve it'.
(I liked 'Jot and Tittle' the other day, though... )

IL:

I do hope history records somewhere the collaborative Pound and Eliot work we do together, as I brutalize your poor poems with a blue pencil and throw Noah in willy-nilly. Perhaps we could publish one of these correspondences on your blog?

Seven / Seven (7)

2011-12-13T03:13:00.000-08:00

Phantasmagoria: not a prayer or a confession, something else

I do not normally dream
but did tonight, of a conflict
between two green mantises.

Mad. Yes it is, stay with me.
It broke out by my side, on the bed.
One swiped the other with a scythe.

I reached out for it, the specimen
I most admired the shape of.
I do not know why

she all of a sudden vanished
in a paroxysm of pink wings,
or was it petals, so that only

one was left. Nor do I know
how I knew this one was male,
or why it matters to me still.

Seven / Seven (6)

2011-12-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

Seasoned Reasons

because Bethlehem flowered, we bloomed,
in a blizzard of correction fluid, and every tree
grew from a profound plantation of money

because economies might have stabilised
inside that cold stable, as cattle lay prostrate
under the peaceful rule of the Christ-child

because what makes society shine, Plato,
was not, and will never be, pederasty – still
quite the hook to hang a captive audience on –

because astrologers, magicians, may qualify
as that day’s queers, aroused as they clearly are
by a deviant star clean as a lost Roman coin

because communities’ mouths frothed
like rivers Israel-over, and in his bed,
every receiver grew to meet his giver

because the contemporary stage has it
that a roof can bend in the centre like a tent,
and not lie flat like a precise law, or a bank note

Seven / Seven (5)

2011-12-11T04:47:00.000-08:00

Parable of an Apostate

Paper money won’t survive the century.
With this, one of his usual short theses,
the shop man hands me a fiver change.

He's folded the queen’s face twice,
there's a tiny tear in her hair. I swear,
I say, this note won’t last one day
in my wallet. My coins will wear on it.

My wife says I have burned my bridges:
boss, colleagues, benefits office -- all of them
condemn the fields I built my house on.

All of these doors adorned with chimes --
who do they ring for? I carry this to my car,
take a careless turn to town, and my place
in a St. Paul’s pew to reflect (O the fee!).

The sun so easily consolidates all its debts
into lighter payments. Each one sets ablaze
every window in its way. So the epiphany:

paper money is made from hemp,
a Cannabis variation. Sometimes
so are teabags, toilet rolls, linen.
I will go to my house, tell my wife:

I never crossed a bridge, I climbed a ladder.
But I won't wear on you any longer. I will score,
fold, stash the obsolete currency: us together.

Then, from top down, I will return
my house to Cannabis, and inhale; see
every single ladder-rung fall, and the face
of my queen blue as I flee the fire.

Seven / Seven (4)

2011-12-10T06:49:00.000-08:00

Phantasmagoria: observance of a hermit

Mantis, look
         at this

almost-trans-
parent habit
you've removed;

floored, flattened
                pressed in the hours
since you renounced its safety.

         There cannot be
too many more, surely;
three, or
              four?

But we are bound to
seventy-times-
    seven skins;

remove shoes
      shirt, coat
      in every instar
we enter, without

wondering why
or when it ends.

Seven / Seven (3)

2011-12-09T09:39:00.000-08:00

Adam and Eve It

Adam, before the difference
of half a wishbone, was an androgyne. Before Noah
no rainbow fun-
damentalists insist. Run

for shelter from their agenda. Remember
men can make a meal of the Word. Male and Female
cuts like Knife with Fork.

Seven / Seven (2)

2011-12-08T07:37:00.000-08:00

Phantasmagoria: projection of two ghosts

spot-cleaning your faunarium
                  after your passing

I took twenty ova from Extatosoma tiaratum
and a further nine from Eurycantha insularis

sleeping now
                   in a plastic RUB
    to be misted almost daily

phasmatodae     from phasma
meaning apparition  phantom

such is the hobby     in an ominous not-
quite-nutcase:         take a fleck

                      of life-and-lacking-
                                  spine

                                  make it speak

Seven / Seven (1)

2011-12-07T07:11:00.000-08:00

I've decided to bite the bullet this cold December, and rejoin PFFA for their seven-seven challenge: starting on the 7th, one poem (well, draft) a day for seven days. I'll be posting them here as well, so you can follow along. Here's the first:

Jot and Tittle
one iott or one tytle of the lawe shall not scape

Once, I almost
joined a community of postmodern monks.

You could recite their offices anywhere in the world --
God isn't bound to geography, the monastery is earth.

But, you know how it is, countries shrunk to cells.
Like drunk or just gung-ho limners, the years

added serifs to every last letter I learned to interpret,
and my Bible was bound to get lost, in my last move.

The Snowboy Book Launch tomorrow!

2011-11-22T01:42:00.000-08:00

What? You didn't know? Well, that'll be because I stupidly forgot to say anything about it on my blog until now. Oops. I will be reading some poems from my pamphlet, along with Andrew McMillan and Ira Lightman, at a lovely bookshop-cum-coffee shop in my hometown of Boscombe, Dorset. It's guaranteed to be small-ish, intimate, casual, and hopefully other things that poetry readings should be as well (provide your own adjectives!). Ira and Andrew are two poets whose work I admire completely, and this will be the first time we've performed together (the first I've seen them perform at all, actually, though I've heard great things).

Wednesday 23rd November, 7.30pm
@ The Crooked Book
725 Christchurch Road
Boscombe, Dorset, BH7 6AQ

See you there, perhaps?

'Beauty is a Verb' in the Post

2011-11-19T06:36:00.000-08:00

I'm suitably chuffed that my copy of Beauty is a Verb: The New Poetry of Disability arrived in the post this morning. I've been reading it on and off all day, trying to absorb the poems and get my thoughts together about the thing in its entirety (and also trying to resist the wish to be in it by reminding myself that it's American, and I'm not). I hope to review it properly soon. In the meantime, though, the first thought I had was that even before reading the poems, the essays which begin each chapter are fascinating enough for their own review. In a review of the poetry, I'm simply not going to have enough room to shoehorn them in. But any anthology of this type (whatever 'type' that is; 'anthology under a theme' doesn't seem to cut it) will need to define itself, declare as precisely as it can what it's trying to do, and frame the poems in some kind of context. These accessible, short essays do the trick with style.

Indeed, I would guess that this book's context will be unfamiliar to some, whether we are 'able-bodied' or 'disabled'. In my own poetry, I've been quietly plugging away (as we all do) writing on my own interests and concerns; and without wanting to be pigeon-holed, disability is one of them. But until several months ago, I certainly didn't know there was any such thing as a 'disability poetry' or a 'crip poetics' movement. Since finding out, I've been thinking quite carefully about the extent to which I would, or wouldn't, identify (and whether I could find others who did on my side of the pond). Anyway, that's the kind of territory the anthology seeks to explore, so this book is an exciting discovery for me, and a welcome and vital addition to poetry and poetics in general. Before getting to a proper review later, I hope it's alright to include here the first paragraph of the preface, by Jennifer Bartlett. It excitingly sets the scene, with hints that we're going to be looking at both subjects and aesthetics, and how those will sometimes be intertwined:

For me, the idea for Beauty is a Verb can be pinpointed to one single moment, December 10, 2005, the day Norma Cole read at the Bowery Poetry Club for the Segue Reading Series. A few years earlier, after a stroke, Cole lost and regained her ability to speak. Now, she used her temporary aphasia and slurred speech to compose a poem that noted a list of words she could no longer enunciate. The result of her reading this work was alternately hilarious and devastating. Cole laughed at the ridiculous, yet utterly wrenching, situation of a poet losing words, and the audience laughed with her. Yet, it wasn't as simple as that. Although the audience laughed, they were also visibly uncomfortable. From the sophistication of Cole's work and her genius as a person, one can guess that this was no accident. Can an entire anthology be sparked by one reading of one poet? I am sure stranger things have happened in this world we called poetry.

What do you think?

2011-11-17T02:24:00.001-08:00

I have been experimenting with funky (and not so funky) blog design templates. What do you think of this one? Shall I keep it, at least for the Winter? Yay or nay?

My Colours in a Series

2011-11-11T04:55:00.000-08:00

I was invited to turn my piece, 'Nailing My Colours to the Mast', into a series. Everything I wrote in the original piece has been expanded and made more detailed, so that each colour is its own blog post. That series has been very kindly posted -- all at once -- to Faith and Stuff. There's quite a bit to read, then, but feel free to have a look, and please comment and give your thoughts on any / all of the posts. It's all about explorative conversation, not dogma and prescription.

I also got to review Simon Barraclough's marvellous Penned in the Margins pamphlet Bonjour Tetris for Sabotage Reviews. Read that too, if you have the time.

Nailing My Colours to the Mast

2011-11-02T01:36:00.000-07:00

For a long time I’ve felt the need to write something which might bring this blog out of the current standstill / self-promotional mire that it is in. Personally, I’ve felt the need to write something long, rambling, blatantly honest, and cathartic. So here it goes: a statement of faith, a response in part to Robert Peake’s poignant (and brief) piece On Being Straight (A Thought Experiment). If you’re allergic to religion (and / or long and potentially repetitive pieces of writing), feel free to ignore this. But if, like me, you’ve ever felt the pang of disappointment and frustration which trying to live with a Christian faith sometimes brings, you might want to read on. To make it slightly easier, I’ve separated the sections under the colours of the rainbow (including indigo, even though it's probably not a colour, because as The Pixies once sang, ‘If the devil is six, then God is seven.’)

There may well be errors, and / or further areas for debate (I haven't discussed the hotly-contested sins of Sodom, for example). Feel free to let me know of any, and let’s carry on the conversation.

Red

I am a Christian who affirms and accepts the LGBT community.

Why? Because I'm a cripple.

In case the connection is less than obvious, here’s the crux of it: queer and cripple, we are both condemned under Levitical law.

Since the first century, for various (and good) reasons, the Church has softened in its fear and vehement loathing of the grotesque, unclean, disabled body. Therefore, I find it more than confusing that we have stubbornly held onto a negative attitude towards homosexual love (and by extension, alternative genders). Why one, and not the other?

Orange

Let’s look at a book: William J. Webb’s Slaves, Women and Homosexuals (2001) uses what he calls a ‘redemptive-movement hermeneutic’ to say that women are no longer of lower status than men (cool), slavery is now unacceptable – even evil (cool), but… wait for it… homosexual acts are still wrong (as if you could separate them from orientation, and Jesus' words about lust (adultery) indicate that you can't; strangely enough, we've also distanced ourselves from Paul's* words to do with the fact that 'marriage' is more about the intention to have sexual union than ceremony, but I won't go into that). There are several arguments Webb gives to back that up, but the main one is that over the course of the Bible’s pages, there is a gradual shift, a liberalisation, of attitudes towards women and slaves. Therefore, we cannot justify a staunchly conservative view on either issue today. But, he says, the same cannot be said of Judao-Christian views on homosexuality: while they don’t get harsher as the Bible progresses (how could they get harsher than in the Old Testament? Death penalty?), they certainly don’t get any better. In fact, they stay pretty much the same, indicating that Christians today shouldn’t differ too much, or at all, from biblical cultures on this issue (he hints that we should drop the death penalty for homosexuality -- that we should be slightly more nice and welcoming -- but only, it seems, because it's an obviously good idea*).

I probably don’t need to tell you that I don’t buy Webb’s ‘redemptive-movement hermeneutic’: it’s a needlessly complex system for developing a moral stance (eighteen steps, I think, to apply to every issue before constructing conclusions) and relies on the fallacy that there are reliable trajectories in cultural attitudes from one point of the Bible to another, when in reality the Bible reads, more often than not, like a heart monitor of high and low points. But even if you do buy Webb’s arguments (and I wouldn’t shoot you), there is no change in attitude towards disabled people from the Old to New Testaments. There is no reason to think we are any less despised in the NT than we always were. Sure, Jesus healed some of us, but that isn’t the same as accepting us as we are (we have to look elsewhere for that). No, his healings make a related, but different, point: that of the spiritual Kingdom of God being ushered into the physical kingdoms of this world. So, by Webb’s hermeneutic, shouldn’t disability still be considered deplorable / abominable, etc.? Funnily enough, he doesn’t say. There’s only so much room in a book about hermeneutics, and you can’t please everyone.

Yellow

Christ’s stance on disability is revolutionary – off the top of my head – in two ways. The first is demonstrated in John 9:3: “Neither this man nor his parents sinned," said Jesus, "but this happened so that the work of God might be displayed in his life.” What a beautiful revision of an old theological idea! The other is in what Jesus said when a blind man approached him in Mark 10:51: “What do you want me to do for you?” There were no assumptions. Blindness is so often physically obvious that it’s perfectly reasonable to think that this man’s would have been. But Jesus offered him a choice: stay as you are, because you are accepted anyway, or have your faith honoured by my healing of your suffering. This was all about the alleviation of personal suffering and the confession of faith, not about physical improvement so as to conform to some societal or religious norm. (And I say ‘religious norm’ because, let’s be honest, the Levitical law prohibiting cripples from becoming priests did so on theological grounds: physical imperfections and blemishes are unclean in the sight of God, even for commoners; the idea that this fact was relevant only for priests is another fallacy – it is simply that commoners aren’t mentioned in sections relevant to the Temple priesthood. Indeed, priests aren’t mentioned where commoners are either.)

Jesus said virtually nothing about disability itself. What he did was talk around the subject of the body, and demonstrate his acceptance of it, in the same way that he said a lot about love (and the sin of unfaithfulness), but nothing about homosexuality: the Samaritan woman at the well was ‘called out’ and forgiven for her infidelity. Mary Magdalene was forgiven for her sexual promiscuity (if you acccept the idea, given to us by religious tradition, that she was a prostitute at all*) because of her recognition of, and adoration for, Christ. There is also a reasonable possibility that the centurion that Jesus met and blessed in Matthew 8 and Luke 7 was partnered with a man, and that the Ethiopian eunuch of Acts 8 may well have been a gay man (who was not told by Philip to change his ‘affliction’ at his conversion). Is this all speculation and conjecture? Of course it is. But not without reason, and the evidence is only as scant as that on which some of us are leaning for our theology of disability. Here’s the rub: we have based that on only two things we know well: 1) that as Romans 8:1 says, “Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus”, and 2) we are no longer living under The Law; Christ fulfils it, refines it, and redefines it.

The fact is, whilst in the New Testament we cripples are certainly not condemned anymore (as we were under Levitical law), neither are we fully definitely accepted and affirmed as a fully-redeemed part of the Church. That’s why some people still believe that if you’re crippled it must be because you’re enslaved to sin and need to confess. Thankfully, the rest of us have dropped these old cultural and religious ideas which were based on ignorance and prejudice. But why: because that was simply a good idea if we were to carry on loving our neighbour into another year, decade, and century. Because those old stereotypes were condemning, and they just didn’t hold water anymore. Because disability just happens. It’s not detestable, it’s a neutral reality. I can no more choose to be disabled than I could choose to be homosexual.

Green

All of which brings me quite neatly to another leader who disliked the idea of homosexual love in the Bible (1 Corinthians 6:9-10, and 1 Timothy 1:9-10), and argued against it on theological grounds: Paul. He is where we get this old chestnut (hideously paraphrased): it was Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. We were designed male and female because those are the puzzle-pieces that make the prettiest picture. Anything else is a deviation from a physical norm and thus, Leviticus tells us (Paul is loathe to revise Leviticus here) a religious one, and thus (God said) an abomination. But here’s the fascinating thing: isn’t the disabled body a ‘deviation’ from God’s intended ‘image’ (if you will) on a much more inherent, basic, fundamental level? Isn’t it a much more theologically-explicit deviation than a slightly awry sexuality? I would say so. Before humans were paired up and told to multiply, we were ‘fearfully and wonderfully made’. God stood back, looked at us, and said we were good: one at a time, as individuals. Can we imagine Adam having Muscular Dystrophy? Eve crawling around with Spina bifida? I’d be surprised to find out they did; and if they did, we’d have to revise thousands of years of religious tradition. I think you get my point: it doesn’t bode well for God’s eye for detail. Plus, disability is a more pervasive problem than any sexuality: having sex (if we choose to, and that’s been talked to death) can be controlled, or prevented; but people just keep being born disabled – keep acting disabled! – and won’t abstain, no matter how hard we try to make them.

This condemnation of the cripple (for the priesthood or not, it makes no difference) is important because if we’re victim to The Fall by simply existing, we all fail when put under God’s holy microscope. There is no physical perfection anymore. BUT: if we have all fallen short of God’s exacting standards, we are also, all of us, beneficiaries of God’s grace. Somehow, most of us have decided that God’s grace renders my guilty-by-being-disabled status obsolete. I am a Christian, despite my body not being what God apparently intended. But have we decided this from Biblical evidence?

I’m not sure we have. It seems to me that we’ve decided it based on the fact it just makes sense: our culture views disability differently than an ancient Jewish one did, differently even than a 1^st Century Christian one did. Under the social model of disability, we now understand that bodies are simply made differently; there isn’t a ‘wrong’ body, and there should never be a despised or unwanted body. The disabled have achieved in the same ways the able-bodied have, and are just as deserving of its rights and benefits. These are our culture’s findings, and many of us in the Church have allowed them to shape our theology about the body, despite what we find (or don’t find) in the Bible, and despite Jesus’ or Paul’s relative silence on (or indirect addressing of) disability.

Oh, except this: Paul said a lot about suffering (especially persecution), and he did talk about the ‘thorn in the flesh’ thing. God gave him a thorn in the flesh, a ‘messenger from Satan’ to torment him, and didn’t take it away, despite Paul’s appeals to God to reverse his plight (‘My grace is sufficient for you’ was his response). Is Paul referring to his blindness following his conversion on the road to Damascus? Possibly. Indeed, many scholars have said that this passage speaks to disability: it’s true that God can work in and through the disabled body, and it’s also true that God might choose not to heal us for that reason. This says nothing about a person’s spiritual status or favour under God. But we have little idea what this passage really refers to; there’s some idea that this ‘thorn in the flesh’ might’ve been a stalker, sent (in Paul’s mind) to make him veer from his mission. For all we know, it could speak to homosexuality; indeed, it could even refer to latent homosexuality on Paul’s part. Maybe the ‘thorn in the flesh’ is a phallic euphemism. Maybe Paul, just for a short time, ‘struggled’ with gay leanings. It’s as good a theory as any, because the fact is, there’s quite a few, and they’re all speculative. Let’s be honest about that.

Blue

All of this, and more, is why I choose to be a Christian who affirms and accepts the LGBT community: because I am a cripple, and because most of you (if we’re friends) have affirmed and accepted me. I do not live under Levitical Law. The Law is written on my heart, thanks to the blood of Christ. I am ‘disabled’ because of society’s unwillingness to see me as equal, not because I am cursed by God (neither I nor my parents sinned!). I can’t ‘abstain’ from being a cripple. Neither should I have to. God accepts me as I am, and Jesus demonstrated that in what he said, as well as what he didn’t say.

Paul, in Galatians 3:28, said: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (that is, not under The Law). Many of us, whether consciously or unconsciously, have added “neither disabled nor able-bodied” to this list of defunct separations, without asking why, or even whether it was OK to do so. We just did it. Why do we struggle so hard to add “neither gay nor straight”? Especially when “gay / straight” is maybe the greatest divorce the Church has suffered since the first century’s “Jew or Gentile”. Why do we not see the full implications of “neither male nor female”? Especially when LGBT Christians (because that isn’t an oxymoron: ‘straightening out’ our sexuality or gender has never been a prerequisite of believing) are being mentally and physically persecuted, pushed to suicide, rejected and abused by the Church itself?

I’ve heard most of the objections to adding ‘gay / straight’ to Paul’s list, but while we keep adding other divisions to it simply because it makes sense to, I don’t buy them.

Because I'm a cripple. And because I don’t live under Levitical law.

Indigo

The law, and its theological underpinnings, served a purpose in its day. This purpose was to separate the people of Israel – a brand-new, specific, chosen nation – from the people of Canaan, a theme which follows through the Old Testament: Israel must appear different, in every way, from surrounding pagan nations (especially when it comes to those behaviours associated with the Canaanite temple ceremonies, where children were sacrificed to Molech – I’m talking about sodomy!). But in Christ there are no longer any boundaries – physical or geographical – that define who is ‘in’ or ‘out’ of God’s favour. People of every sexual orientation simply want to love one another. Some of us are Christians, and ours is a global faith.

Violet

For me, all of that puts paid to any arbitrary ‘rules’ about who we are, or aren’t, allowed to love.

Because I'm a cripple. Because I was once condemned under Levitical law. And because I'm not condemned anymore. The curtain has been torn. "It is finished."

*amendments made thanks to feedback

Oxford Gig Tomorrow

2011-10-23T13:29:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be ambling around in Oxford tomorrow, I will be reading from my pamphlet, alongside Claire Trevien, Emily Hasler and Shaun Belcher, at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop at 18:00. Please come, it should be a fantastic evening of poetry, and my first time joining my fellow Salt pamphleteers on the Salt Modern Voices tour.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 7

2011-10-14T07:47:00.000-07:00

This has been up for a little while now, but better late than never. For this one, I was invited to Matt Meritt's Polyolbion. We talked about a range of subjects, from theology and 'political' issues to influences, mentors, and what I think we could be doing to enthuse schoolkids about poetry.

Trevien and Me on Peony Moon

2011-10-02T08:44:00.000-07:00

I just realised I forgot to share this with you on here: fellow Salt pamphleteer Claire Trevien and I had a virtual conversation via email, for Peony Moon. I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to review her pamphlet and ask some questions about her work. She returned the favour, and the result was this. Enjoy.

Sabotage Reviews

2011-09-26T05:00:00.000-07:00

I'm glad to have had the chance to review Marion McCready's pamphlet Vintage Sea, for Sabotage.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 6

2011-09-09T03:12:00.000-07:00

My next interview is up at Miso Sensitive. My thanks to Andrew Spragg.

Horizon Review

2011-09-08T01:24:00.000-07:00

Issue 6 of Horizon Review, Salt's flagship literary magazine, is online now. As usual, it's a massive collection of things to feast your eyes on: poems, stories, art, essays, reviews. I'm thrilled to be in there for the first time with three pieces of writing: 'Emoliage', 'The Blake Sheep Replies' (poems), and a review of Tim Atkins' staggeringly good poetry collection Folklore. My poem 'Emoliage' is also in my pamphlet The Snowboy, so consider it a taster.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 5

2011-09-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

Right, we're getting through these at a rate of knots it seems, but I'm thoroughly enjoying it. My latest interview was at Tony Williams' blog. We talked about poems by Hopkins and Arnold, poetry vs. fiction, lines and linebreaks, discursive poetry, and the Apocalypse. Enjoy.

Salt Modern Voices Tour Dates

2011-09-05T07:52:00.000-07:00

More dates have been added to the Salt Modern Voices Tour, the latest of which I'll be reading at. I hope to see some of you there! Here is the list of tour dates as it stands:

Readings

Salt Modern Voices: Paris. JT Welsch and Claire Trévien read at Culture Rapide in Belleville on 21 July 2011 from 19h30, followed by a Jam Blues.

Salt Modern Voices: Oxford. Shaun Belcher, Mark Burnhope, Emily Hasler and Claire Trevien read at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop on 24 October 2011.

Salt Modern Voices: Warwick. Robert Graham, Emily Hasler, Adrian Slatcher and Claire Trévien read at The Writer’s Room, Warwick University on 27 October 2011 from 19h00.

Salt Modern Voices: Abergavenny, Wales. Emily Hasler, Adrian Slatcher, Angela Topping, and Claire Trevien read at the Hen & Chickens on 6th November 2011, from 18h00

Salt Modern Voices: London. A two-part event on 14 and 28 November 2011 at The Compass:

14^th November: Shaun Belcher, Adrian Slatcher, Lee Smith, and JT Welsch
28^th November: Mark Burnhope, Emily Hasler, and Claire Trevien

Salt Modern Voices: Manchester. Shaun Belcher, Angela Topping, Claire Trévien, and JT Welsch read at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester on 30 November 2011 from 18h30.

Interview 3, Part II

2011-08-23T08:42:00.000-07:00

The second part of my interview at Robert Peake's blog is here.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 4

2011-08-23T01:58:00.000-07:00

This one was a little different, and happened on my friend Jorge Farah's non-poetry blog, Every-ist and Every-ism. As well as the obvious, there are Pearl Jam references dotted about, and arguments about The Spin Doctors and Batman. Enjoy.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 3

2011-08-22T01:02:00.000-07:00

My third interview was with London-based Californian poet, Robert Peake. Here is part 1.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 2

2011-08-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

A little while ago I was invited for an interview by Phil Brown at Silkworms Ink. Slightly earlier than I was expecting, here is what happened while I was there.

The Snowboy Virtual Tour: Interview 1

2011-08-15T02:03:00.000-07:00

A while ago I mentioned that I was going on various blogs and online venues in the next two or three months, to talk about poetry and The Snowboy. My first interview is with Declan Ryan at Days of Roses; he asks me about influences, favourite collections and music. He's also featured my poem 'The Ideal Bed'. I hope you enjoy.

The Second SMV Interview

2011-08-14T11:14:00.000-07:00

Adrian Slatcher, Claire Trevien and I asked Lee Smith some questions for this second Salt Modern Voices interview. Enjoy!

Salt Modern Voices Tour Dates

2011-08-13T05:13:00.000-07:00

Well, we promised. So here I'm glad to say that we can deliver. Here are the first three places on the map for the Salt Modern Voices tour, featuring me, and the SMV pamphleteers, reading our poems at different spots around the country. Feast your eyes on these, pick a date or four, then come and feast your ears... or something... on what promises to be some exciting readings.

Salt Modern Voices: Warwick. Robert Graham, Emily Hasler, Adrian Slatcher and Claire Trévien read at The Writer’s Room, Warwick University on 27 October 2011 from 19h00.

Salt Modern Voices: London. A two-part event on 14 and 28 November 2011 at The Compass. Eight readers in total:

14^th November: Shaun Belcher, Adrian Slatcher, Lee Smith, and JT Welsch
28^th November: Mark Burnhope, Robert Graham, Emily Hasler, and Claire Trevien

Salt Modern Voices: Manchester. Shaun Belcher, Lee Smith, Claire Trévien, and Robert Graham read at The International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester on 30 November 2011 from 18h30.

Does Poetry Make Anything Happen?

2011-08-08T14:46:00.000-07:00

In Memory of W.B. Yeats

I

He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we had agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;
By mourning tongues
The death of the poet was kept from his poems.

But for him it was his last afternoon as himself,
An afternoon of nurses and rumours;
The provinces of his body revolted,
The squares of his mind were empty,
Silence invaded the suburbs,
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers.

Now he is scattered among a hundred cities
And wholly given over to unfamiliar affections,
To find his happiness in another kind of wood
And be punished under a foreign code of conscience.
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living.

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual.

What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.

II

You were silly like us; your gift survived it all:
The parish of rich women, physical decay,
Yourself. Mad Ireland hurt you into poetry.
Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in; it survives,
A way of happening, a mouth.

III

Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest.
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry.

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice;

With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;

In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise.

W.H. Auden

Salt Modern Voices Tour

2011-08-03T12:36:00.000-07:00

My fellow SMV pamphleteers and I have been conspiring to bring you a Salt Modern Voices Tour, in which we will be touring the UK and reading at various venues. As a lead-up to that, we will be taking turns to interview one another about our pamphlets and our work in general. The first stop on the pre-tour features JT Welsch, in interview with Lee Smith and Claire Trevien on Sabotage. Go and have a read; and when it piques your interest, go and buy JT's fantastic pamphlet here.

The Snowboy has arrived

2011-08-02T03:27:00.000-07:00

My first small collection of poetry is now available from Salt Publishing. You can see the description, and endorsements, by clicking here. You can buy it from the Salt website, or from Amazon.

I'd like to say thanks to my family and friends for putting up with my poetry-writing obsessions all these years, especially Sarah, my self-confessed "poetry widow". Thanks also to anyone who has seen early versions of some of these poems, and who I didn't thank explicitly in the book itself: everyone at PFFA, particularly Laurie Clemens, and anyone on Facebook who has ever pressed 'like' (or madly scrambled to find the 'dislike' button; every opinion is useful).

Come buy, come buy!

Also, between August and October I'll be visiting various blogs and online venues to answer questions about my pamphlet, and/or various related things. My first visit, according to the 'plan' (which isn't much of a plan, I'll admit), will be to Andrew Philip's blog, Tonguefire. I'm looking forward to that, and will post a link here whenever a new visit on 'The Snowboy Virtual Tour' (ooer) is available for you to read.

'The Snowboy' on Peony Moon

2011-07-28T02:02:00.000-07:00

Speaking of what it says on the tin, Michelle McGrane's excellent blog of featured poets, Peony Moon, has just put up two poems from The Snowboy. I hope you enjoy them.

Skate and Samphire: A Trailer for 'The Snowboy'

2011-07-28T01:39:00.000-07:00

Andrew Philip has this morning foretold the coming of The Snowboy on his blog, with a very imaginative approach: a cento consisting of lines from the pamphlet. He also mentions that I'm going to be answering some questions on his blog -- about the pamphlet, poetry, disability and faith -- which I'm really looking forward to. That interview should, with any luck, happen in August, and will be just one of the blogs and online venues I'll be visiting to talk about The Snowboy, poetry, and whatever people feel like asking me, from now until (probably) October. More on that, and the pamphlet itself, very soon.

Naming the Best

2011-07-27T06:56:00.000-07:00

I'm rather bouncing off the walls, after seeing the full contents of the forthcoming Salt Publishing anthology, The Best British Poetry 2011. It's the first in a series which will present the best new and emerging poets from the UK. My extra glee (can I use that word, with its current TV baggage?) is down to the fact that my poem 'Twelve Steps Towards Better Despair', first published in Magma 48 and also in my forthcoming pamphlet The Snowboy, is included. The anthology is due for mid-September, and it looks like Roddy Lumsden has done a fine job. A definite must have, and I'm proud to be in such fantastic company.

2011-07-27T00:48:00.001-07:00

2011-07-26T07:33:00.001-07:00

Holidays are coming, holidays are coming...

2011-07-25T07:25:00.000-07:00

Well, not really. But The Snowboy is fast approaching. Watch this space...

We Interrupt Your Regular Programming...

2011-07-13T04:42:00.000-07:00

...to bring you my latest review, of two collections, up at Stride. (I'll get around to the third blog post in my Taking Stock series soon...)

Taking Stock (2)

2011-06-29T12:59:00.000-07:00

In April, I took part in National Poetry Month (NaPoWriMo) -- the challenge to write a poem every day throughout April -- in a slightly different way than usual. I did InternaPwoWriMo, the brainchild of Geof Huth, a poet and creator of pwoermds and visual poetry. I was invited by minimalist and visual poet Stephen Nelson to join in, as was Andrew Philip, and various other poets I've got to know through Facebook. I'm really glad I did it. The act of creating pwoermds -- poems made of single words which are themselves made up of two or more existing words -- got me thinking not only of their helpfulness in writing poems, but also in thinking about faith, spirituality and contemplation (as an aside, April also started me off thinking about contemplative prayer as a spiritual discipline). Here's a couple of things which Stephen wrote to me on Facebook, in response to my post yesterday, which he's kindly given me permission to post here. I think they set a good context for the rest of this post:

Yea, interesting. I liked it. Will follow your thoughts as you post them. What gets me really at the moment is how beyond conception God is, let alone language. The Bible and the idea of the Trinity are a framework to approach and seek to explore what is really beyond conceiving. Which is a paradox, I know, and leaves us perhaps wondering: why bother? But just because you can't conceive of something or express what it is, doesn't mean you can't experience It. All of which is very zen and that's where my mind is - heading for a limitless expanse, a void filled with love (how paradoxical is that?) which I call Jehovah of Hosts, but which is so much more/less. As for poetry, I feel myself floundering if I try to write religious poetry. I frame my experience in religious terms, sometimes Christian, sometimes Buddhist or Hindu, but language itself when applied minimally feels like the tiny key I need to get a glimmer of that space, which is why I like the minimalist Robert Lax, a friend of Thomas Merton, and Merton himself, who in his essays comes closest to expressing the inexpressible.

And this:

One more thing. A system of belief, what I think you referred to as dogma, has its uses, but is limited and can be abused when applied too rigidly, but ultimately has to be transcended by a direct, contemplative experience. You probably know that. And the minimalist type of prayer - short, repetitive - which relates to minimalist poetry, is an excellent way to enter that contemplative space. I don't think you have to believe "the right things" to be loved and accepted by God. His love is unconditional and only has to welcomed as the ego dissolves under it's influence.

I'm completely in agreement with Stephen here. I won't comment on his words too much; they speak for themselves. But they do provide a good background to some thoughts I had during my time creating pwoermds. The other thing which provided a basis for my thinking was hearing Ira Lightman -- conceptual poet, artist and a good friend -- on BBC Radio 3's programme The Verb, talking about fonts and their use in artwork. One aspect of his work is creating art installations for public spaces, and fonts are used heavily in them. The font is far more than just a letter in a pretty style. The letter itself is more than just something in the English alphabet. It's an image. It consists of straight lines and curves, shapes, serifs perhaps. Some letters close in on themselves to create new geometric shapes. If we come to the letter 't' completely fresh, forgetting that it symbolises 'toast', we might say (to use religious imagery) it's a cross shape, and that cross is attached at its base to an upside-down shepherd's staff, or an umbrella handle. What might that mean? If we take the letter 'e', we might say that the semi-circle at the top symbolises the rising sun, maybe, and the 'tail' underneath is its reflection, which isn't quite complete because the water has broken up the line.

In listening to The Verb, I was reminded that not only a poem, not only a word, but a letter, which so often apparently equals a thing ('t' is for 'toast', of course) is merely a representative symbol. No wonder poets distrust language. As much as we love it, can language ever really 'equal' or perfectly represent anything? That's why we try to 'make it new', to use Ezra Pound's phrase. We manipulate, play around, stitch sounds and words together to create new meanings, sometimes ridding them of their original meanings while we're at it. Because received language, what we've been told does this and that, is not quite good enough.

The act of making new pwoermds (you can see some of my efforts in April's blog posts) reminds me that language is actually completely fluid. In order to agree on what something means, we require agreement about what it means. People attach meanings to symbols all the time, and letters are a perfect example. In most of our minds, they tend to 'mean' something only when they're part of words. And words only 'mean' a given thing to a given number of people (in slang, 'bad' might be 'good', a 'wicked bloke' might be 'a very nice bloke, actually.') That sounds like a painfully obvious point, but in creating brand-new words, I was reminded that words and letters are in fact found, manipulatable, permeable objects. That's an exciting prospect for a poet, forefront in my mind recently, and has all led me to get fairly tired of the ability of everyday communicative language (even poetry, if you like) to do what we think and say it's doing.

Maybe we should see words as objects of contemplation. Mark Rothko (an atheist, I believe) wanted us to view his paintings that way, and if you've spent any time in the Rothko room at The Tate Modern, you might think (as I do) they perform that function perfectly. They're doors and windows into an unsettling, brooding experience. You can't quite put your finger on what the paintings are doing, but it's tangible. Paradoxically, Rothko was 'religious' in the sense that he believed in art as the vessel for the viewer's experience, embodied in a painting incarnationally. To my mind (and this was further confirmed during the conference), maybe 'religious poetry' has less to do with piety (not forgetting that how to remain holy and be a good poet was a major subject for John Donne) than craft, technique, ways of working, aesthetic.

One idea talked about in the conference was poetry as 'incarnation'. The word became flesh. Well that's what words do, isn't it? Christians believe that God was carried by humanity: the Word, God, was carried by a human body (again, we get so pedantic about how this is expressed, but you get the idea). Words do that: contain something 'other', something mysterious. God, or an emotion, or a thought. So words are carriers, vessels. 'Orange' is not an orange. It's just a container for the idea, or the object, of an orange, or the colour orange, or a mobile phone company. Like I said, as soon as we decide a word definitely means something, as opposed to something else, we'll be disappointed unless we can become more accomodating, and realise what it also means.

Some conference speakers also talked about the word as 'sacramental object', and the writing of a poem as a sacramental act. Words don't simply represent things. They physically embody realities which can only be grasped with the spirit. This sounds rather like 'no ideas but in things' (Wallace Stephens), or even 'the devil is in the details', which strangely subverts the ancient idea of 'God in all things.' (See? Language is fluid.) That's another way to view words, then: not as descriptors (here's where adjectives start to sound rather boring and useless) but as sacramental signs. We handle words carefully because they represent, embody, enact, point towards. They transubstantiate, become flesh, in our minds. Or we hope they will, at least. We hope that the word 'tree' becomes a tree in a reader's mind, or we don't bother with it. If we think it won't, we'll use something more specific, like 'Birch.'

'Cross'; 'blood / wine'; 'body / bread'; 'water / grave' -- these are tried and tested symbols, established sacramental signs Christians believe were given to them by Christ. But poets could be understood to have seen in the world -- possibly even created -- new ones, either through placing existing symbols in a new context, or (and this is where pwoermds come in) creating brand-new words which 'embody' a host of meanings. In this way, no word obviously means what springs to mind immediately. Meaning is not a given. Indeed, a pwoermd doesn't really claim to mean anything except for what its composite parts suggest. A pwoemrd, like any good poem, is an open book: it suggests, hints, and in doing so, moves us, shocks us, makes us laugh.

So, to use a religious analogy, maybe, just maybe, some of our more familiar words 'preach' too much? Maybe we need to think about them as pliable materials, like clay (which, interestingly, is another Biblical motif, symbolising new life, flesh, formation). Maybe we need to think of them as vessels for something other: word made flesh. Maybe we need to think of them as as transformed by their context, like objects in the sacramental act. Since April, one of my preoccupations has been the question: aren't we all just scrambling and unscrambling letters, playing Scrabble, in the hope of getting a good score (whether that be socially, or in terms of personal epiphanies)? The reality of God, if you believe it, cannot be described. It cannot be explained. Neither can anything 'other', anything ethereal. But might we be able to embody these ideas, carry them, point our minds to contemplate them? Maybe that's what language is for.

All this brings me back to Stephen Nelson's words at the beginning. Poems, words, letters: they're all framework. It's what they point towards that counts. That's why poets have so much fun manipulating them, stretching them, mixing them up, juxtaposing them. In themselves, they're a bit slippery and untrustworthy. Writing a poem makes them bend to our own will. (That's where Donne is torn, since he also wants to live under God's will; but we got some fascinating poetry out of his struggle.)

So I've hinted at John Donne. In my next post, I might look at him, and two or three other poets, who use these 'religious' ideas as a framework for their own craft. As usual, I'll be responding as a reader and writer, not an expert scholar. For now though, have a look at some of Stephen's work, which manipulates words and images, making us wonder what the difference really is between the two. Then go and see Ira's work, conceptual poetry in which fonts and words are transformed into imagery, which is then tranformed into physical, tactile objects.

Taking Stock (1)

2011-06-28T09:09:00.000-07:00

I've been meaning to write a blog post about a conference I went to recently called The Power of the Word: Poetry, Theology and Life. I've wanted to say a little about The Snowboy, my debut pamphlet forthcoming from Salt. And I've wanted to write something where I, in effect, kick back and take stock of all that's happened in, and for, my writing in the last year -- summing up thoughts I've had, lessons I've learned, decisions I've made (and continue to make) about what poetry might be, and my small part in it. It's occurred to me that I could do all these things in a few blog posts, not least because the conference really tied together a lot of these threads.

I took some notes while I was there, which, typically, I managed to leave at my parents' house; so I can only give general impressions of what I learned. In any case, I couldn't and wouldn't want to reproduce the lectures on here, some of which were far more complex than I could hope to get right. So these are just the fragmented impressions of an obsessive writer and reader of poetry.

If you're allergic to talk about religion, that's fair enough; maybe you can just skim-read this for every reference to the word 'poetry'. If you don't like either, there should be some tennis on TV. If you don't like tennis, sorry, I'm not sure if I can help you!

The first talk we had (by a speaker whose name was on my notes; that'll be a running theme, I'm afraid) was about locating a religious imagination. What is religious poetry? Well, firstly, let it be said that it doesn't have to be overtly God-based stuff. In a sense, all poetry is religious because it embodies, brings to life, things which can't be said in plain speech and language. Also, words are only vessels: they carry something 'other', and it's that 'other' which we're all searching for when we read poetry. It's that 'other' which we hope to be pointed towards in a poem. You can call that God, or emotional truth, or whatever. The image one speaker used is that of a finger pointing to the moon. When we read words, we're so often staring at the finger -- what it is -- when really we should feel freed up to stare at the moon -- that mysterious thing it might be pointing to. That's what poetry tries to do.

But in a stricter sense, what does it mean to be both religious and imaginative (since, to varying degrees, religion can't be removed from its dogma)? What are the barriers against a religious (specifically Christian) poet being fully, unashamedly imaginative, whilst also remaining respectful to their faith and its doctrines? The issue, if you believe it, of a living God actually having something to say about what you write is a slightly sobering thing; and writers all through history have grappled painfully, intelligently and hilariously with it (some of whom I'll talk about in later posts). If there's one idea that I'll remember from this talk, it's that imagination, whilst it's been so often quashed in the more dogmatic churches, is already at work in anyone who comes to to faith; it's essential to faith. No one has a faith without it, because as Kierkegaard told us, to have faith requires a leap of the imagination. Simply understanding Jesus' words requires us to use our imaginative brains. Intellectual debate and analysis is crucial, but gets us only so far. How imagination has became an enemy, or even a slightly mistrustred ally to the church, is anyone's guess. It should be integral to it.

For me, a later lecture, around poetry and 'truth', book-ended this first one. Religious people (I include myself) have often had significant worries about poetry's place alongside the Bible. What's poetry for? What's the point of it? How can we possibly talk of poetry embodying truth, and even inspiration, alongside scripture? Don't all of its mind-warping metaphors, leaps of imagination, cryptic language, threaten to ask a few too many questions, or at worst, be a bit blasphemous? These are questions which I've play-fought in my own poetry -- especially in The Snowboy -- grappling with prejudice, slur, satire, silliness and sometimes near-as-damnit angry confession. I hope the balance is in some way interesting, even where it might not be pitched quite 'right'.

Anyway, this poetry and truth lecture ended with a question from someone in the audience: "If poetry can be taken as 'true', 'inspired', 'God-breathed', even when it's after 'emotional truth' and its parts are fictional, doesn't this undermine the objective truth (or truths) found in the Bible?" I think this person had been fairly miffed throughout at some of the speaker's conclusions on this, and I don't think the speaker softened the blow with his answer either. Again, I paraphrase: poetry manipulates, makes meaning. It doesn't trot out existing truths but makes us see things freshly when we are receptive. In this speaker's mind, Biblical revelation was the same. He believed that in terms of religion, 'truth', while many of us would like to say that it exists, is a metaphor -- like all words -- for something which we have slowly come to know, but that is ultimately mysterious. So while it's helpful to use in an empirical context, perhaps it's not very helpful in terms of faith.

Indeed, something which is not 'objectively true' by the standards of empirical evidence need not be false. There is no fear in seeking to have our minds tranformed by the word. We're changing our minds all the time. So because 'objective truth' is a word used in contexts which look for empirical evidence, 'proof', it needn't be a theological category, not because God needn't be 'true', but because he's true experientially. We have to taste and see. He also had an interesting take on John 8:32: 'Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.' Traditionally, that verse has been taken to mean "the correct belief will save you. Have the right faith, and you'll have freedom." Well, this was very cleverly subverted when the speaker paraphrased it like this: "You'll know that something is the truth because it will set you free." That is, you'll know something is true when it bears good fruit in your life. It's an interesting interpretation which, at the very least, seems consistent with Jesus' words in Matthew 7:16. "By their fruit you will recognize them. Do people pick grapes from thornbushes, or figs from thistles?" And it seemed very relevant to poetry. Poetry is as poetry does. Language is transformative, and that's where a poet's responsibility lies. The speaker ended up by saying, rather flippantly, that the cruciality of 'objective truth' tends to be argued by men -- emphasis on men -- with power, money and influence on the way things happen. If you have a power-fuelled agenda, 'objective truth' becomes very helpful indeed. Otherwise, not so much.

Memorable Holiday Reads

2011-06-22T04:19:00.000-07:00

Andrew Philip was a bit miffed (though unsurprised, I'm sure) to find that The Guardian's Best Holiday Reads had so little poetry on it. To respond, he invited poets and poetasters to suggest some of their own, and has been blogging them on his site. He'll add to the list as and when he receives them. If you have a bit of time, head over there. I'm glad to be among them.

Also, go over to Surroundings, where Rob A. Mackenzie has been posting very interesting reflections on Tennyson's 'In Memoriam.' I'm really glad he's done it, because it's my conviction that in being bored of these widely anthologised 'old-fashioned' gems, and obsessing over the need to find brand-spanking new ways of saying things, sometimes we throw the baby out with the bathwater. These poems have endured for a reason. Let's stop using 'old-fashioned' as a veiled insult, or even a backhanded compliment.

Just a Quickie

2011-06-21T10:01:00.000-07:00

I've been writing a blog post today which will be on Andrew Philip's blog, hopefully tomorrow. I'll link to it when it's ready. Just quickly though, I think I've forgotten to mention my latest review on Stride. As usual, I review three collections, all of which I found really enjoyable in their own ways. Have a look if you like.

Poetry, Theology and Life

2011-06-15T13:11:00.000-07:00

Tomorrow I'm leaving for London for the weekend, where I'll be going to The Power of the Word: Poetry, Theology and Life conference at Heythrop College. It looks to be a very exciting programme of lectures and panels, about the relation of creative writing and literature with religion and spirituality and, ultimately, the question of how much it all matters. I'm sure I'll be brimming with ideas and inspiration when I get back, spiritually refreshed as well as challenged about my writing. I love so many of the poets being talked about, and I'm particularly looking forward to hearing professor and poet Michael Symmons Roberts read some of his work on one of the evenings. I'll be sure to blog about the whole thing when I get back, hopefully next week. The conference, for me, is a culmination of various things I've been mulling over since April -- when I took part in International Pwoermd Month -- regarding my own constantly evolving faith, and how it relates to my poetry. Indeed, I've been wanting to blog about that since April, just haven't found the words for it yet. Hopefully the conference will kick my brain, and my arse, into gear on that score.

More soon. Have a good weekend, I know I will!

Ashley Sykes Photography

2011-06-09T07:17:00.000-07:00

As usual, my blogging habits haven't been so habitual recently. But I couldn't resist pointing you to this article from the Daily Mail, which features my good friend Ashley Sykes and his incredible droplet photographs. He takes the droplet image to new heights (12 inches, according to the article), experimenting with milk on water, coloured dyes, and reflections (I'm nothing short of amazed by the heart within the droplet; metaphorical to say the least, it's a fine example of visual poetry). I've also seen some of his powerful landscape shots -- sea, piers, jetties, rocks -- and macro-lens shots of insects. Ashley has recently taken some author photographs for my forthcoming Salt pamphlet, The Snowboy, one of which is now to the right of this here blog. More on that soon. For now though, enjoy the article, and maybe consider purchasing one of his spectacular prints.

A.B. Jackson and the Poetry Book Society

2011-05-04T03:08:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Donut Press and the fantastic A.B. Jackson, whose Apocrypha is the current PBS pamphlet choice. It's a masterful small collection that you must try and get hold of. If you need more convincing, I blogged about it a while back (just scroll through these archives and it shouldn't be too hard to find). Andrew Philip is also noticeably thrilled about the decision; read what he has to say here and consider taking up his call to support the Poetry Book Society, an imperfect but essentially crucial part of the UK literary scene. We can't do without it.

thirtiest

2011-04-30T10:08:00.001-07:00

confetid

2011-04-29T02:15:00.000-07:00

optipest

2011-04-26T04:47:00.003-07:00

disabolishity

2011-04-25T02:29:00.000-07:00

jellOh!

2011-04-24T09:21:00.001-07:00

Easterminal

2011-04-24T02:45:00.001-07:00

eleisonar

2011-04-23T02:09:00.000-07:00

lessin / morin

2011-04-22T10:47:00.000-07:00

prair

2011-04-20T09:52:00.001-07:00

deliberathos

2011-04-19T04:59:00.001-07:00

picnock

2011-04-19T02:50:00.001-07:00

2011-04-18T09:16:00.000-07:00

Today's pwoermd is for Bobby Parker, whose new unusual yet very enjoyable book Ghost Town Music I have reviewed here. It's not really a word as much as (in true Parker fashion) a collage of verbal units from which sense and meaning may or may not be made.

col.lager.um.bo.ok

esoturmeric

2011-04-17T04:24:00.001-07:00

chestocugh

2011-04-15T02:00:00.000-07:00

califo'narnia

2011-04-12T13:31:00.000-07:00

minammal

2011-04-12T09:29:00.001-07:00

[ut0u

2011-04-12T09:27:00.001-07:00

chamelialien

2011-04-12T04:32:00.001-07:00

2011-04-11T01:10:00.000-07:00

This is for my good friend Rob Wyld. He's down there somewhere:

mauveyngighte

tan"trick"quay

2011-04-10T04:45:00.000-07:00

pam.pan.fillet.fluff.phil.lit.rit.yore.

2011-04-08T22:13:00.000-07:00

ecstatear

2011-04-08T05:06:00.000-07:00

ralynx

2011-04-05T08:00:00.001-07:00

splindored

2011-04-05T05:46:00.001-07:00

spake(so?)parson

2011-04-05T05:09:00.001-07:00

oi.dugtyre.d

2011-04-05T02:09:00.001-07:00

potent.ate.tent.trite.tripe.try.trap.trip.type

2011-04-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

pro:test:ant:ism

2011-04-04T06:02:00.001-07:00

Oh, By the Way...

2011-04-04T03:16:00.000-07:00

I've recently reviewed three poetry collections for Stride: Julian Turner's Planet-struck, Jane Routh's The Gift of Boats, and Elizabeth Barrett's A Dart of Green & Blue. Have a read, if you fancy it.

2011-04-04T01:55:00.000-07:00

The next pwoermd is for Ross Paterson, who has become a friend through a mutual love of keeping reptiles:

repu,tacit,isle

2011-04-03T04:15:00.000-07:00

Today's Pwoermd goes to Michelle McGrane, the brains behind the excellent blog Peony Moon and a new poetry collection, The Suitable Girl:

femortalitale

2011-04-02T04:54:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I realised the blog had a few new followers, which is nice, so I've decided to dedicate a pwoermd to each of you. This one's for Mark "Coops" Cooper, an old friend and a very talented DJ and music producer if I remember rightly (and I do remember rightly):

ravencrowd

International Pwoermd Month

2011-03-31T07:06:00.000-07:00

*Posted today, as opposed to (as well as) yesterday, since today is the 1st April, and yesterday, erm, wasn't.

It would appear that I've been roped into it, very politely, I might add, by Stephen Nelson. I've done NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month) -- a challenge to write a poem a day, every day during April -- a few times now. I don't have the energy for that right now, but this felt like something more achievable. So what is a Pwoermd / Poemword? I haven't known for very long, but as its name suggests, it's a poem made of a single invented word. Like a poem, that word should hopefully spin the mind and imagination into different directions. This blog will tell you all about it, including -- if you're geeky enough (and I was) -- the many ways a pwoermd can be made. But without further ado, I'll just say that for the next thirty days, this blog will be home to my efforts. Here's todays:

wil.dual.ife

Angela Topping, 'I Sing of Bricks'

2011-03-18T11:01:00.000-07:00

Reading Angela Topping's poetry, I'm reminded of Robert Frost: not always in the way she writes, but because what she writes demonstrates how she thinks. Like Frost, Topping's poems reject - seemingly by default - what we tend to call "wilful obscurity". "No tears in the writer," said Frost, "no tears in the reader. No surprises for the writer, no surprises for the reader." There are a few relatively experimental pieces here ('Johari Whispers' is one) but more often than not, those tears come from immediately recognisable experiences not obscured by intellectual tricks ('Coping', 'Bypass', 'Hospital Visiting'). Those surprises come in language which hits us immediately with an epiphany which, however clever, is relentlessly generous and welcoming. There is no sense that Topping is writing just for fellow writers who 'get' this stuff.

That's not to say the poems are superficial. Like Frost, the clarity of the language - that initial spark - ignites a fire in our imagination which lasts long after our first reading; a poem tempts us back time and again (I'm hesitant to say 'demands', but only because Topping wants to inspire, delight, not to prescribe or instruct). The title poem juxtaposes something religious, devotional, magnificent (singing) with something mundane and unremarkable (bricks). Its title is an apt one for the pamphlet, which is very often about seeing old, stale things afresh: shoes, a glove, grass, snowdrops ('Each Blade Singly' and 'Three Ways of Snowdrops' are among my favourite titles here). Topping's writing is clever, but cleverness is never made a virtue for its own sake; it's always a means to an end, which is to reach the heart. In 'How To Capture a Poem', the poem is made into an unseen, elusive entity which constantly evades capture; wriggles from our grasp whenever we try to pin it down. Topping understands that none of us has a monopoly on what a poem is or should be, does or should do.

Among Topping's various books and pamphlets is her debut children's collection The New Generation. Reading this pamphlet, I wonder how blurred the boundaries are - or should be - between 'children’s' and 'adult'. Of course, clarity and immediacy are expected in the former, but Topping reminds us that in fact, they’re hardly an enemy of intelligence or depth in all poetry. Frost isn't trying to make us scratch our heads in 'Walking By Woods on a Snowy Evening'. He wants to surprise us, delight us; fill us with curiosity about everything being left unsaid in the scene he describes. For the reader, the delight is in becoming like a child ourselves, full of so many questions that we're bursting.

If the poems in I Sing Of Bricks aren’t wilfully obscure, they're certainly wilfully determined: to sit among poems like Frost's, which reach the intellect, but only as a rest-stop on their way towards the heart. Poetically speaking, Topping has taken that road not travelled often enough. So, whether you love poetry already, or wouldn't normally touch it with a barge pole, that makes her very worth reading.

A Couple of Bits

2011-03-10T04:43:00.000-08:00

I somehow forgot to mention that my poem 'The Snowboy' was published here on Ink, Sweat and Tears.

And as a break from poetry, I've reviewed Radiohead's King Of Limbs here on Eyewear.

Finally, I know; I've all but neglected the blog lately. But I'm planning on writing something about two new pamphlets by Angela Topping, which I received a short time ago; something about animal poetry, which I've been meaning to write for a long time; and (probably) a post about the wonderful new album by Elbow, Build A Rocket Boys!

Watch this space... not too intently, mind.

Big Confusions

2011-02-21T11:42:00.000-08:00

One of the questions discussed on Sunday, in BBC1's The Big Questions, was 'If Jesus returned today, would he be a Catholic?' Of course, this tangled my mind in several different, complex knots. I couldn't help thinking that I don't remember him ever denouncing his Judaism. He'd be a Jew, of course, as he was when he died. But to 'be a Catholic' would imply that Jesus would have to worship himself (which would make him a Christian, and a very egotistical one). Of course, he is also one third of the Triune God ('Heretic!' I hear you say, only because it's fun to shout 'Heretic!' whenever anyone tries to make a statement about the Trinity); so perhaps he could worship himself, if he wanted to. But he didn't. He doesn't. Does he? Anyway, I suspect that the question the programme was really asking is 'If Jesus came back today, would he support the Roman Catholic hierarchy and, of course, papal authority?' Well, as a born-and-bred Evangelical (now very much post-Evangelical), I wonder whether Jesus would support any of the Church's hierarchies, systems or constructs at all, whether Catholic or Protestant (because of course, every Church denomination is pretty good at setting up its own, and berating everyone else's). Like Sunday morning TV, I'm not going to make any attempts whatsoever to answer the question; I've lived with it for several years now, so you could say it's part of the furniture.

Promises, Promises

2011-02-18T05:22:00.000-08:00

I'm going to write a decent blog post soon. I promise.

Till then, please, accept
a really, really, really
terrible Haiku.

New Horizons

2011-01-31T08:05:00.000-08:00

Dear all, the submissions are still rolling out (which isn't to say they're always rolling in). Great news is that I'll have two poems in Issue 6 of Horizon Review, Salt Publishing's own online literary magazine edited by Katy Evans-Bush. I'll say more about that nearer the time, and provide a link as soon as it's up. But please, have a look at the current issue, which includes poems, articles, reviews and short stories from some of my favourite writers. It'll be an honour to be among the always high-caliber list.

One of the writers you'll find there in Issue 5 is Matt Merritt. I've been enjoying his first two publications lately - the pamphlet 'Making the Most of the Light' and his first full collection 'Troy Town' - after which I'll move onto his latest. I'm enjoying the work very much. It's tender, heartfelt, evocative, clever, and often very very funny. He has a real ability to celebrate nature and humanity's place in it. Or to celebrate humanity and nature's place in it. Reading these poems, it's clear to me what critics mean when they call something 'emotionally intelligent'. They're full of feeling but also detailed observation, clever without a shred of self-consciousness.

In other news: I'm very happy to have been invited to write two poems for a Red Squirrel Press anthology, being published, it's hoped, in late 2011. One poem's based around Lord Summerisle from The Wicker Man. (But will Nick Cage and his diabolical bee allergy make an appearance? Haven't decided yet.) The other is based around Joe Pesci, the mobster-movie icon also known for trying to infiltrate The Fortress of Dangerous Toys which Kevin McCallister made of his house. Ah, Home Alone: THE movie of the 'Left Behind' generation. The world had gone on holiday and abandoned us. But instead of moping, we ate pizza and invented grunge* music.

Speaking of which, there's a general call going out here - anyone's welcome to submit - for poems based particularly around TV Adverts. So, send something in. Every Little Helps, as it were.

*If anyone's interested in an anthology about music, please consider me for a poem about Seattle grunge. K THNX (as the new iPod Generation might say).

Mutability, White Birds and Apocryphal Bees

2011-01-27T03:06:00.000-08:00

Congratulations to Derek Walcott for winning the TS. Eliot Prize for Poetry with White Egrets. My congratulations also go to Jo Shapcott, who has won the Costa Book Awards for Of Mutability. It's the second time in a row that a book of poems has won the Costa; last time, it was Christopher Reid's beautiful A Scattering. Both books deal gracefully with the subject of mortality and, to a greater or lesser extent, sickness and infirmity.

In wondering what the heck to write about here, I've sometimes thought that I should concentrate on the poets and poems which inspire my own work in some way. So, very conveniently, a few days ago I received through the post a personally-signed copy of A.B. Jackson's new limited edition pamphlet Apocrypha. It's breathtaking, both for its best-album-never-made artwork (three cheers for Donut Press!) and of course, for its poetry, which is Jackson on top form again. The always spare poems -- clipped lines, sentence fragments -- are nevertheless packed with striking and often hilarious imagery. Not a word is wasted. Jackon's last (and first) collection Fire Stations used plenty of theological/religious ideas and images. The poems were not-quite-surrealist (there seemed to be no deliberate intent to confuse; the 'epiphany', that 'aha!' moment of understanding, was still there) and pleasingly symbolic (it feels rare to be offered meaty symbolism these days!). Even the title alludes to emergency fire rescue, and the Stations of the Cross. So: modern, meditative, monastic even.

The Apocrypha poems deal again (though often more irreverently) in bible stories stirred with a smattering of jumped-up contemporary culture. There's still that surreal juxtaposition of images (their interpretation being left, this time, almost entirely to the reader). There's a close attention to form and shape: the majority of lines contain a recognisable 2, 3 or 4 stresses, and each poem has the same structure: three tercets and a concluding couplet.

I was privileged to read at the same Magma Poetry event at which A.B Jackson was one of the two 'headliners' (Philip Gross was the other, whose poetry I also love). I was hooked. He truly performed the poems, unlike myself, who got up to the stage, nervously mumbled some lines, and then got off again. Anyway, I bought a copy of Fire Stations (which very deservingly won the Forward Prize in 2003) and read it till the early hours in my hotel room. For all its technical craft, irreverent humour, the book had a strange, spiritual impact on me. It did what poetry should do... or does do... or sometimes does (you pick).

I didn't set out to write a review, but is that what that is? Almost, maybe, no?

Ah, and look

2011-01-18T12:33:00.000-08:00

Dan Wyke has very kindly published two of my poems on Other Lives.

Jazz-hands

2011-01-18T08:43:00.000-08:00

Happy new year, all. Yes, I'm back. Thanks to December thawing into January, my blogger's cold-feet are beginning to warm. I've gone through various crises I don't mind admitting: re-launch the blog, change its name, reduce the amount of 'subjects' I try to cover; all thinly-veiled attempts to cover the fact that I am - yes, I'll admit it - a practising blogger. I realised quite soon that I was banging on about nothing but poetry, so I've decided to carry on down that road, if that's OK with you lot. I probably should change the 'theology' bit to 'faith', since I'm not really 'reading theology' at present, just interested in faith matters. Basically I'm narrowing it all down, but that doesn't mean I won't veer off-piste sometimes... I'm not a skier.

So yes. Happy new year, and welcome back to The Beasts. What I did do over Christmas and New Year's was spend some time polishing my trumpet... *cough* ready to play some for you now. I'm not very good, so excuse the squeaks.

*clears throat*

Last year I had my first publication: three poems in Magma 48. That was followed towards the end of the year, by two poems being chosen for nthposition. I finally had the privilege of interviewing the very talented Tony Williams at the Salt Blog (which you'll hopefully find by following that link).

So an extremely satisfying 2010, and I'm looking forward to what 2011 might bring.

Watch This Space

2010-10-16T09:14:00.000-07:00

This blog (and/or my brain) is in a bit of a transition period at the moment. Lots of things are being rethought and reimagined: among them, am I trying to cover too much here and therefore covering none of it with too much depth; should I narrow the focus to poetry, which has clearly been the over-riding passion here (I could always throw in the occasional other thing, but without signposting it).

Thanks to everyone who's been reading and enjoying - especially the four of you who've made it clear by placing their smiling mugs at the foot of the page - and please, watch this space. I'll be back, and the place just might look just a tiny bit different...

Cheers.

Joshua James Richards, a very talented fellow

2010-10-03T04:31:00.000-07:00

and an old friend of mine, currently lives in NYC and is a short film-maker and photographer. Please visit his blog, Master of None. The photographs are absolutely stunning -- the best album or book-covers you've never seen -- and actually, my mind is already drumming up the possibility of a collab project.

Congratulations

2010-10-02T02:46:00.000-07:00

to the authors of two of my favourite recent poetry collections: Tony Williams, whose spiffing book The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street has been shorlisted for this year's Alderburgh prize, and Andrew Philip, whose moving collection The Ambulance Box is currently number 3 on Salt's best-seller list. Both collections have been shortlisted for various prizes; here's hoping the wins are around the corner.

New Walk

2010-09-30T08:03:00.000-07:00

Issue 1 of New Walk magazine is out; a new literary magazine that Rob Mackenzie told me about and to which I almost submitted some poems (maybe I'll be in time to try for issue 2?). Anyway, it looks like another excellent collection of poetry and reviews -- short stories as well, I think -- to join a growing list of reputable literary magazines. I'll point you to Rob Mackenzie, who'll tell you far more about it than I can before I've got hold of my own copy. If you're familiar with poetry, I hope you'll buy it. If not, why not give this new magazine a go, if only to support the use of paper for very important things? Heh.

More Blog Discoveries!

2010-09-21T05:42:00.000-07:00

You remember me recommending Peony Moon? These poets' blogs are fast becoming my favourite things on the Internet. This one may well give you a lump in the throat. It's written by Mairi Sharratt from Edinburgh, a poet in her own right, and looks to be a wonderful and varied read. As usual, the dominant obsession is poetry. The latest post, a second installment by Rob A. Mackenzie, continues his journey 'from poetry reading school boy to a man with a first collection'. Go and read, and meanwhile, I am off to see if I can find the first part...

Christmas is a-Coming

2010-09-17T05:17:00.000-07:00

I mean, well, eventually. Before it does, you need to have gone here.

A mug that says 'Go away I'm writing / reading / thinking'?

A T shirt that says 'Unreliable Narrator' or 'Careful or you'll end up in my novel'?

What's not to like?

What to say about Jonsi? (Place-holder)

2010-09-16T04:00:00.000-07:00

I went to a Jonsi gig on Monday night, here in sunny Boscombe. It was spectacular; he is spectacular -- everything he touches turns to gold, seemingly -- and a real enigma in the pop/rock music world. I'm going to blog properly about my impressions of the gig (promises, promises - ed) just as soon as I've managed to form coherent, ordered thoughts. There's so much to say and so few words to say it with.

For now -- and for those who aren't already fans of his band Sigur Ros (why not?!) -- here are a few links you should check out. Then make sure you go and Youtube some stuff.

http://jonsi.com/

http://www.myspace.com/jonthorbirgisson/music/albums/go-full-album-15461160

By the way, what do you think about my new imaginary 'ed'? He hasn't been around for long, but I think he can stay (of course I can, you need me - ed).

Speaking of Heaney...

2010-09-16T02:54:00.000-07:00

The winner of the inaugural Seamus Heaney Centre Prize is Sian Hughes' 'The Missing', published by Salt. It's a fantastic book and the prize is well-deserved, even if I was betting on Andrew Philip's 'The Ambulance Box', which was just narrowly pipped to the post.

Seamus Heaney, 'Human Chain'

2010-09-15T09:57:00.000-07:00

I bought it today: the new collection by everyone's favourite 'poetry celebrity.' That's not to talk down Seamus Heaney, an experienced poet with an immense arsenal of skills and one of the few poets I have loved and followed since my GCSE days (when he was in the textbook!). I can't think of a living writer more deserving of his status. For me, picking up one of his books is like picking up the new Pearl Jam album.

I was just a kid. Where other writers seemed to be 'clever', 'intelligent' and 'worthy of analysis', Heaney swung at all those and followed through, reaching me where it mattered: the heart. In his poetry I found strong evocation, intelligence and emotion, all inexplicably knotted together. There are writers I read in order to learn how to write. Heaney I read just to remember how to love living. And I still don't know how the heck he does it.

Consider these lines from 'Miracle', which asks us to consider:

Not the one who takes up his bed and walks

But the ones who have known him all along

And carry him in --

Being disabled (and having a faith) myself, I'm already interested in the surface subject matter. But the poem might stand for a number of things; it never narrows itself down to mere metaphor ('this' is 'that'). For a while now, I've been thinking about how a poet might write effective 'Christian' poetry in today's plural, cynical society. And I think -- without wishing to speculate about Heaney's spirituality -- that this poem might go a long way towards it. We are asked to consider not the one cared for, but the carers; not the one who has -- or lacks -- a measure of his own faith (that old theological bone of contention!) but the ones who had faith on his behalf. So in a way, it's a sort of an affront to outdated theology, yet using a single feather instead of the whole chook. It's also a powerful, delicate poem about friendship; quite a thing at a time when even writers can be hell-bent on irony and cynicism. It -- and the whole collection, really -- reminds me that one doesn't have to resort to that in order to be effective.

Can you tell I liked it?

So as usual, even if you think 'well, I did read a poem once, and it didn't make me puke', give it a go. Though just to warn you: it's published by Faber and Faber, so you might find the corrugated front sleeve a bit abrasive for toilet paper.

Musings on Self-Promotion and Blogging

2010-09-08T09:33:00.000-07:00

On the latest Magma blog, Rob Mackenzie is asking about poets and self-promotion. Having published a grand total of three poems so far in my 'poetic career', this is something that I only think about occassionally, lest it become too intimidating. It's a really interesting discussion, if only because everyone who wants a readership needs to say 'Here I am.' The Internet offers us a platform, and there are both good/appropriate and bad/'clumsy' ways to use it. That's the intimidating bit. I'm a 'poet' -- in a way -- and I blog. Is what I'm doing self-promotion? Maybe it is. Is it bad, embarrassing self-promotion? So that I'm not crippled with fear (you're already crippled with Spina bifida - ed) I'd prefer to think that all I'm promoting here is poetry. Poetry as an artform, a craft, and just a rollicking great thing. I'm constantly humbled and slightly scared by efforts made in the 'poetic Internet world' by writers I love and respect, but if I can just write some things that a small number of people enjoy reading -- whilst never claiming to be an expert -- that'll do, I think.

Do pick up Magma 48, by the way.

*steps down off soapbox*

Let There Be Light Discussion!

2010-09-05T14:09:00.000-07:00

It has come to my attention from a friend, that people were unable to reply to my posts. I have been talking to myself, folks. That problem is now fixed, so please, reply, discuss... discuss like the wind! Or something.