My reading at StAnza 2019

I'm beyond delighted to be able to confirm that I'll be reading at StAnza 2019 in St Andrews. I'll be appearing at a Border Crossings event on Saturday 9th March alongside Diana Hendry. You can find more details of my reading on the festival website here, together with the full programme of events. Now to choose what other poetic delicacies to savour during my stay...!

The cadences of speech

Why do so many poets show a clear understanding of the cadences of speech while giving an introduction to their poetry, only to demonstrate a complete disregard for them when starting to read their work to the audience?

The tightrope walk of grief, Fiona Moore's The Distal Point

When reading in London alongside Fiona Moore last week, I was reminded just how difficult it is to write about grief without seeming maudlin. If Moore’s first full collection, The Distal Point (HappenStance Press, 2018), is perhaps the most successful treatment of this subject since Douglas Dunn’s Elegies, how does she pull it off?

Throughout her collection, Moore is walking on a tightrope, managing to affect her readers while dodging the trap of sentimentality. She does so by employing restraint. In this context, restraint doesn’t imply emotional castration but instead the holding back of waves of feeling so that minuscule overflowing inversely becomes far more powerful than a huge flood.

One such example of her technique is the ending to ’Unknown ’, in which three characters – an imagined child, the absent partner and the first person narrator – are brought together to powerful effect:

“If you’re a ghost that walks

beside me, she is doubly so. But she

grows older with time

whereas you don’t – soon

the gap between you and me will show.”

There’s not a single adjective in this stanza. Adjectives implicitly involve personal interpretation and judgement, so Moore avoids them here. She’s seeking the layering of apparently minor details, playing off the destinies of you and she, separating them via line breaks, building up to the bald reportage of her killer final line. Like all killer final lines, it takes us back to the beginning of the poem and suggests we might start reading all over again.

The Distal Point richly deserves its recent short listing for the T.S. Eliot Prize. Maybe the only surprise is that its delicate impact should receive such recognition. Of course, the biggest personal reward for Fiona Moore is the consequent access to a larger readership. For the wider poetry community, it represents a timely reminder that craft provides us with a gateway to art and must never be underestimated. 

What a fortnight!

If last week saw me doing a whistle-stop tour of Chichester, London and Aldeburgh, this week has seen me back in Extremadura, racing to keep up with orders of wine and olive oil for Christmas.

Only now can I pause for breath and start looking back on an terrific reading in London, followed by a packed event at Poetry in Aldeburgh. I was going to mention the brilliant people I met in the course of my travels, but such a list would run to a huge paragraph. Suffice to say, it was the best week of my life in poetry.

However, perhaps the best news of all is that the inaugural Rogue Strands reading generated 324 pounds for the Trussell Trust in aid of food banks. That's down to my co-organiser, Mat Riches, whose idea it was to raise those funds!

And now to Aldeburgh...

Just a quick post as I gather my stuff together in readiness for the drive up to Aldeburgh following yesterday's terrific evening at The Rugby Tavern. The range of voices was wide, but they all complemented each other with an unusual synergy, so thanks are due to all our readers - Fiona Moore, Jessica Mookherjee and Kathryn Gray - plus the open-mic poets and my co-organiser, Mat Riches, who also gave a top-notch reading.

And now to plot my reading on Sunday, revolving around food and wine. Bearing in mind my love for the subject, that shouldn't be too tough. Again, I'd love to see you there!

Tonight's the night for the inaugural Rogue Strands poetry reading

The title to this post might well be self-explanatory, but here come the details: Fiona Moore, Kathryn Gray, Jessica Mookherjee, Mat Riches and myself are reading at the Rugby Tavern in Bloomsbury this evening, starting at 7.30 p.m.. The entry fee is only £3, and all proceeds will be donated to the Trussell Trust in aid of local food banks. We'd love to see you there...!