Slow down, listen

I've been trying to change my listening habits recently, it bears some relation to me changing my phone, too. Neither of these things has much to do with poetry, you may reasonably say, but as there is some relevance to this blog in them, I'll explain:

One the blessings, and also curses, of the age of digital music has been the inexorable rise of playlists. Putting one together yourself is quite good fun, it puts me in mind of the painstakingly compiled mix-tapes of you're, in which one would either show off to friends or attempt to impress a girl (neither would ever work) with a carefully selected list of tracks designed to prove the coolness and worldly taste of the compiler. Nowadays, the ease of compilation lends itself to more prosaic usage, exercise, housework.

The playlist is also handy for discovering work new to you, I try to keep my listening habits fresh and not get stuck in a rut, so lists compiled by others are helpful for that.

But the case against is that your listening becomes atomised, variety becomes the default. Gratification is instant, neophilia the watchword. You bounce between artists and genres at a dizzying rate, something is lost in the maelstrom.

Recently I had to upgrade my phone, not something I particularly like doing, I find the short shelf life of a lot of technology somewhat depressing, and can't shake the feeling that I'm participating in my own destruction by ripping through rare earths and minerals at the rate of a phone every few years. But still, had to be done, and what with the state of the old phone, downloading all the stuff I had on there onto the new one was a non starter. 

I had to start again, a tabula rasa. This included a certain rapacious and notoriously tight-fisted streaming service (I should say here, I do buy gig tickets, merch and actual albums: support artists people!), who are one of the apps foisted on you as standard. As there was a free trial, I thought, might as well.

My first instinct was to put a playlist together. But I stopped, here was a chance to change things up, see what happens. I picked an album, one I hadn't listened to in many years (the Afghan Whigs "Congregation", since you ask), popped the headphones on and went for a run.

  

I won't say it was a revelation, but it did feel like a homecoming. I do listen to albums in their entirety at work, as I have an ageing CD player (and some aged CDs) in the corner, much to the perturbation of my youthful staff. But it's not really "listening" as such, more background music. To listen to an album start to finish, in order, with nothing else to do but hear (and put one foot in front of the other) felt fresh and unusual. I felt, suddenly, the urge to write.

I know, I know, being inspired by music, nothing new in that, but it felt like something I'd forgotten about. A disused room in the house, to use a somewhat hackneyed phrase (the urge to write may have returned, but that doesn't mean that I'm any better at it).

In a short-form world there is a case to be made for the long. In a time of sound bites and snippets, tweets, skeets and reels I've discovered I need to slow my mind down and allow it to work at a slower pace (easy when I'm running on these knees, fast isn't an option).

Since that moment I haven't abandoned the playlist entirely, but I'm making more effort to listen to albums in their entirety. And not just delving into my back catalogue, this only works if I also listen to new (or at least, new to me) music. Suddenly, I am exposed to new voices, sounds and concepts (the latest Kendrick Lamar, for example, is a sonic marvel), all of which feeds into the urge to create, to talk back to the new world I've consciously chosen to step into.

It seems oxymoronic, to embrace the new by stepping back to an old form, but I do find an album a more enriching experience, out on my painful, plodding runs, I am learning anew.

Coming around again

(Or, further steps on the road back from wherever it is I was to wherever it is I'm going)

I've had cause of late to think a little about how things can come back round, how concerns which you thought you were done with can suddenly be back in your writing, as if from nowhere. 

It was while idly just doing a bit of daily writing, I'd managed to grab a spare bit of time and had the opportunity to just get a few words down, I wasn't thinking anything in particular, but for some reason I found I was writing in a tone and register that I'd ceased using a long time ago.

Now, it's not for me to say what I'm "like", I've been cornered by far too many bores who are convinced that "their" way is the only way to be convinced that one should only ever write in a particular style. I've always found that a very constrictive view, and I'm pleased to say that what little I have come up with to date has wandered around a lot in terms of style, concerns, formality. The idea of being "the same" throughout one's entire writing career is one which I find somewhat stifling.

So it came as something of a surprise when a little bit of free-writing slowly started to take on a tone and style that I thought I was done with. Not because I dislike it but more because, well, I was done with it, I'd done my work with it and it always seemed redundant to continue. I'd done that, to keep going with more of the same would essentially be to be pastiching myself, or so I thought, whenever I thought about it at all, time to do something new.

At the risk of getting too cryptic, I started writing in the style that defined my first chapbook, L39, most of the poems for which were written over twenty years ago, so you can see why I was a little surprised at this turn of events, it felt like having a conversation with my younger self, in a sense. 

Still, as I did so, it felt a little like coming home. It was an easy tone and rhythm to fall into. I'm wary of pursuing what comes easily and naturally, because it's all too easy to become glib, to become a caricature of oneself. The original concerns of small-town weirdness and parochialism, and the slightly mock-heroic tone, they've been done, so it's not really something I intend to do much of, but I enjoyed a brief foray into my writing past. Not sure I'd pursue it any further though, so here seems as good a place as any to park them for a bit while I think on.

Two asides

1

Sat, marinating in the stale bath of the sermon

drawn up through soil and down through air by indifferent hands

to my horror, I felt the words slip in, incubate

and after a while, I grew gravid with Middle England

my belly swelled with boundary disputes, I carried

complaints about noise, borrowed lawnmowers

and to be frank, I felt put upon to be poked by midwives

as a hitherto disinterested bystander, why me, but within me

parked next to their swelling grudges, pushing on my bladder

I knew why various experts prodded and tested

my urine, my semen, I was a wonder of the age

but they never hung about, couldn't meet my eye

Papers were written, but in truth I knew

that I was set up for this

 a sacrifice on the altar of politesse

For without me, bursting and groaning and crying to Heaven

they'd have had to carry their spite with them

and it would have drowned them, each in turn

2

and here at the crossroads we can see

through the sheeting sleet the site

where Roscommon, lecher and gossip

was hanged for the sheer malice of his words

lack of intent not precluding guilt

his protestations of inanity, insignificance

were swallowed by the rising tide of townsfolk

a scrum recalling ancient games of football

he should have known better, a man of his vintage

so refined in many ways, well-dressed, a lover

of fine coffee when so little was to be had

(his delivered by liveried men in red bags)

but the irresistible taste of slander

the flavour of sensation, the way

that lewd descriptions of the widow Fairfax

felt in the mouth...

he was a sommelier of gossip, revelled

in the viscosity of Rimmer the Carter's son's dalliance with Carter 

the Rimmer's daughter -  and her not yet sixteen

and on the altar, I heard

Bliss, the floral top-notes of Billy Chisholm's

eye for the lads, the lengthy, languorous aftertaste

of Dredge's bankruptcy - but it's all hidden somewhere

just ask the widow Fairfax

And they say, if you wait at this site, all these years

after the mob swallowed him whole, you can still hear

his last cries on the evening wind

But none of it matters! None of it!

The intermittent resumption of service

Well, I've been here before.

It is a recurring theme of my writing existence that life gets in the way, to the extent that maybe I could credibly claim that enormous swathes of writing nothing are "integral to my process, actually". Anyone who's kept half an eye on here or Coastalblog over the last (what is it, twenty years now? Blimey), will have heard me sing this song before, long periods of silence followed by penitent blogs about how I need to make more time for writing, this time I mean it, etc etc. But I suppose there comes a point where one has to recognise that no, this isn't a situation which can be easily remedied, this is simply how one is. I'd like to imagine a world where I get up in the morning and make more time for myself to write regularly, start to submit again, maybe publish again, but I think it unrealistic to expect it, based on the evidence of, well, me being me for the last twenty years.

But despite this being a recurring refrain, that doesn't quite mean I'm willing to knock it on the head (another familiar trope of this particular sort of blog post, which I've written so many times now that that it practically qualifies as a sub-genre). To my pleasure, I've recently had the odd fleeting moment where the idea of writing didn't feel impossible, I wasn't immediately required for anything else, I'd done enough housework not to feel guilty, and managed to occasionally get the odd piece done. For the lack of anything better to do with them (for the idea of finding time to research which magazines or websites would be ideal seems far too fanciful right now, baby steps, I'm just pleased I'm writing again) I'll pop them here, as and when, I think. Doing so, even intermittently, is a distant connection to a place I still want to visit more regularly, and for longer periods, some day.

Lacking inspiration, the following were responses to other poems (getting reading again is a whole post by itself), a failsafe standby in times of creative drought. As to their origins, I'll leave it to the reader to guess. Anyway....

Unseen Dance

She moves between instants

then not, before

apparent, insistent, existence

It follows that her movement

is both something of herself and

helping the crowd see 

what it wants

in her steps

are the life histories

of everyone watchings, she

takes them, costumes them

contextualises them

tells them back

when she stops and

theaudience drifts away

thinking about what

they saw in themselves

some elated, some appalled

some disgusted, some afraid

she becomes herself again

her stillness is insistent in

instant the instant ceases 

there is silence

there is a silence

It's like this

i

he said your eyes

are watery, your hair

is seedy and your voice

reminds me of a chorus-line

Guys and Dolls. maybe

(She knew he meant

Like the sea, Flaxen and Musical

so let it slide, he was himself

so seldom, now)

It's good to see, she said

you've not lost touch with your roots

ii

I can't quite get it right

he said, the poem's

out of order

I struggled with the learning

I wanted time

to get my accent back

She said: you're older

than some hills

you've never lost it

a poem's not a puzzle, nor am I

iii

when they came to decipher him

and pick over the bones of his words

there was little left

he'd worked out what he wanted to say

and she'd laughed and said finally

you old fool. I was always here

iv

Love stories are a continuum

start and end points

thoughtless, idiotic, unnecessary punctuation

your eyes are always a part of me

and I have always been here

there's always been the shift of the sun

and what was it I meant to compare you to?

too many poems

he scratched his ear

picked up a pen

started to write

Parker Crescent, 9.25, Sunday

 It's a filled-in morning and the sky

for those that like to read into things

is suitably bleak

for the front pages

are a collage of cyclical death and

trying to write it with reference

to anything but the death

which exists on its own terms

is an obscenity, likewise commentary

the constant flow of takes

entrenched and dumb and you think

as you walk down a suburban street

still-sleeping of how

there's money being made off this death

and scores being settled off this death

and positions being taken

prejudices reinforced

careers advanced

tweets sent

off this death

and how if

you do anything but abhor it

entirely

fuck you

A Cliff Yates Collected? Yes please

I am semi-disconnected from the poetry world these days, but I'm in touch enough to hear that Cliff Yates has got a Collected coming out, which is excellent news. I was privileged enough to, with Cliff, be a member of the Edge Hill Poetry and Poetics Research group back in the noughties, and quickly became a fan of his style. Never showy, but always insightful, with a deep-rooted humanity. I always enjoyed how Cliff's work could move surely from domestic to absurd to beautiful, often in the course of a single line.

So I shall, of course, be getting a copy. And I shall, because I am a monstrous egotist, be wondering why I don't have a lovely artefact with my name on it, and because it's a Sunday morning, and I haven't out anything up on here for a while, I wrote something about it..

Discovering Cliff Yates has a Collected Poems out

A bit of news I said

Cliff's got a Collected Poems coming out

I wasn't sure she cared, but carried on anyway

I'd nothing else important to say that morning

but do love the sound of my own voice

Why haven't I got a Collected Poems out? I asked

She looked up briefly from her Duolingo

It's because you never write any poems, she said

I mean, look at this, you're trying

to write one now and this

is the first line break you've attempted and

to be frank

I don't think you've pulled it off

I'm getting back into it, I said

I  think, anyway, it's like

riding a bike - there

that one was better

Barely, she said but yes

It's an improvement

I'll give you that

But before you get

ahead of yourself

it's your turn to clean the bathroom

Two years

Dear me, has it really been that long? Well, not quite, but almost.

The last post here was October 2021. In the interim, I've managed a few posts over at Coastalblog, and I've kept up a diary, but that's been the sum total of my writing. My practice has dwindled to nothing.

Well, not quite nothing; intention, but inaction.

I've kept a diary almost as a trail of breadcrumbs back to the idea of writing as a creative endeavour. Hoping that one day the act of making marks on paper might lead to some synapses firing somewhere. Writing as muscle memory.

I have always been too inconsistent with my writing to consider myself serious about it, over the last couple of years that inconsistency has hardened into a consistent nothing. I could make excuses and say that life has got in the way, but it is also true that I have allowed life to get in the way. It is furthermore true that I have separated writing and life, as though it were not part of it.

But it's still in there somewhere.

Keeping a diary has reminded me that I have always regarded writing as a way of looking at existence. My diary entries are broadly factual, an aide memoire, but every once in a while there is a flash of something other, a brief aside into philosophy, and attempt to raise the day above the quotidian (without fictionalising my own existence, which would defeat the object). Recently, I started titling diary entries, a way of inserting a line I'd heard that day (my favourite so far being the day which featured a trip to Southport, where the daytime karaoke by the Marine Lake ensured that day will always be titled "Little bit of Engelbert there, Ladies and Gentlemen") but also a way of contextualising the day. I realised that this was a creative act, it felt like I'd taken a step back down the road.

A few weeks later I started a file for writing bursts, not much, a few words here and there. This morning, I thought about writing a poem, I wondered if I could. I put a few lines down, I broke it back to basics. I'm not going to put it here. But it felt like another step back. This afternoon, I'm doing this.

These are tentative steps at best, but they are steps nevertheless. For a long while I didn't feel I had anything to say any more. Now I feel I might. We'll see. Either way, it feels good to be back.

 

Further alternative realities

The last blog briefly spoke about alternative realities, something of a theme which is always rattling around the back of my head. And as we live in increasingly unreal times, freshly amazed that things could turn out like this, it's an idea which feels increasingly relevant, another poem on that theme:

Hi-ho silver away

 

Crossing between

The parts of years

Seamlessly, as if

 

I have a lengthy series of apologies to make

 

One could only see

the moments between

from a distance

 

mostly for minor infractions

 

the accretion of time

layering, sedimentary

time, ossifying

 

like making you listen to my awful band

 

the unnameable

horror of the depths

the layers of green

 

like only ever projecting

 

the silence of

the midsummer house

its isolation

 

like never listening

 

the headland viewed

from above

a panning camera

 

I’ve only recently learned

 

land undulating in time

with the sea’s swells

a slow echo

 

that every act of indifference

 

an endless ripple

like a slowly shaken carpet

the Earth’s co

 

has consequences

 

-respondent sine waves

Slow, sad, imagined

Shuddering, unstoppable

 

And the land keens at minor slights

 

coursing along an imagined England

shaking it to the core

rattling its raddled heart

 

parched peas in a tin can

 

on a sun-stricken street in Kirby

I saw a three wheeled pram

Pushed determinedly

 

What have I done

 

I saw bombs fall where they’d

Make no sound

I watched the moss absorb history

 Taking the stories down into

The peat which

Rents stories

By the century

 And this arc this

Imagined England

Cutting itself loose from reality

Cutting itself away

From every thing but itself

 Watching its flights of roosting birds

Arrowing in flexing the sky

To hunker down for the night

 

Hold tight, everyone.