Cooking and writing

Cooking and writing are two of my favourite activities. Both are creative processes and both end with the release of the finished product, allowing others to interpret it. These endings do, however, display one key difference: reading a book is an individual activity, often months or years after its creation, whereas a dish is usually shared immediately.

Maybe that's why I love Antonio Gamoneda's poem, Sabor a legumbres, so much. A terrific portrayal of a family meal, it finishes as follows:

...Yo siento
en el silencio machacado
algo maravilloso:
cinco seres humanos
comprender la vida a través del mismo sabor.

...I feel
in the crushed silence
something wonderful:
five human beings
understanding life through the same taste.

I can't imagine life without the enjoyment of food, its preparation and the sharing of it. So many specific moments and people are intrinsically linked in my memory with a certain dish. My poetry often reflects this love of everything culinary, bringing cooking and writing together in a celebration of each other.

Free Verse 2012: The Poetry Book Fair

Here's a date for your diary: this year's Poetry Book Fair will be held on Saturday 8th September at the Candid Arts Trust Galleries in London. You can already view the extensive list of exhibiting publishers on their website, with the full programme of readings to come in the next few days.

I'll be attending and participating with HappenStance, bringing a couple of surprises with me! More details in due course...

Review: Melanchrini, by Maria Taylor

Maria Taylor is a poet with a keen sense of identity. By that, I don't mean that she's fond of attaching labels to herself. In fact, the opposite is true - she's only too aware of the shifting, ambiguous nature of identity, and her verse does an excellent job of exploring its vagaries.

Her first full collection is titled Melanchrini (Nine Arches Press, 2012), in itself a word - meaning "dark-featured young woman" - that hints at one of the book's main concerns. This is British poetry with a Greek Cypriot background. Copellas and levandes are juxtaposed with a park off the Uxbridge road, Pebble Mill and a dance at the Palais Hall.

Taylor explores the co-existence in her upbringing of two languages, two cultures and two set of social attitudes. At times, her husband is "English", at others "englezo", his acceptance into her family under scrutiny, as she portrays the blending and clashing of British and Cypriot ways of life. This double perspective undoubtedly enriches Taylor's writing, enabling her to write about both countries with a critical eye. She acts simultaneously as an insider and outsider.

The extra counterpoint is crucial to the development of Taylor's skill at exploring the ambiguous qualities of identity as mentioned above. In that respect, Kin is a key piece:

"...You won't need a passport or papers,
there will be a glint in your eyes
which is recognised or understood...

...remember
there was no second or third country,
just a place where people came from,
where once before maybe you did too."

This poem begins in an authorative tone, identity being clearly above mere documents. By the end, Taylor is purposely undermining all that came previously. The "maybe" of the final line is reminiscient of the "almost" of Larkin's An Arundel Tomb.

Melanchrini stands out among first collections for its coherence. Maria Taylor's achievement lies in having generated a deeply personal thematic and poetic drive that runs throughout the book. I very much recommend it.

Julia Copus in The Guardian

I've been catching up on my reading after a couple of weeks away, and especially enjoyed Julia Copus' feature in The Guardian a couple of weeks ago on "the joy of siblings". That might be a slightly naff editorial turn of phrase, yet the article is anything but, telling the story of her relationship with her brother and sister amid the collapse of their parents' marriage.

The piece is located in a section titled Life and Style, although it closes with Copus' poem, The Back Seat of my Mother's Car. I already knew and admired this poem, but its impact is greater here. What's more, casual readers (not just those who browse Guardian books) will have encountered excellent verse, all in the context of the preceding prose. This is just what's needed if poetry is going to attract new readers. A definite thumbs-up!

The importance of poetry blogs

There's no doubt that the role of poetry blogs is changing. In the current era of Twitter and Facebook, there are more immediate ways to reach and impact on people than via blogs. However, that very speed of "feeds" doesn't make blogs redundant. Instead, it alters and concentrates their focus.

What do I mean by this? For example, I have almost 100 Facebook "friends", nearly all of them from the poetry world. That figure might be lower than for the average user. Even so, just a few hours away from Facebook means I have to wade through dozens of posts to keep up. In other words, the drive of news feeds, while being a key advantage, also turns into a handicap, as significant contributions get lost in the onslaught of information.

Blogs, meanwhile, allow users and readers to catch up at their leisure every few days or weeks. I fully understand that status updates and tweets have their place (some poets also use them in intriguingly creative ways), and have very much replaced blogs in terms of communicating immediacy, but that has cleared the way for poetry blogs to focus on what they are good at: 200 to 400-word posts - be they reviews, news or articles - that need space to develop arguments.

I find the format of a blog is ideal in terms of the content that I can offer - with a bit of luck, Rogue Strands will be around for some time to come!

Tasting Notes

Not long after last year's publication of Inventing Truth, I met up for lunch with my editor at HappenStance, Helena Nelson. We talked about my day job as the blender and export manager for a winery down in Extremadura, Spain, and she encouraged me to write about it. I recall discussing the minefields and pitfalls inherent in a subject and genre with such potential for kitsch when brought together. However, I drove back home that day in a blur of thought as to just how I could meet the challenge.

As part of my job, I write the back labels, advertising copy, website and tasting notes for all my co-operative's products. The wine world has a linguistic shorthand that's packed with hyperbole and clichés, and so in my poetry I decided to play about with them from an insider's perspective.

The first consequence was a set of four poems that I sent to Helena Nelson for some feedback. After all, she had been the initial catalyst for my creative process. Her reply was a shock - they were the basis for a chapbook that she'd like to publish!

In the months that followed, I fleshed out my ideas, building a manuscript that suddenly, with a tweak here and there, took off. The result is Tasting Notes, my second HappenStance pamphlet, due in September. I'll be giving a number of readings (and tastings!) to launch it. Dates and venues in due course... 

My second Happenstance pamphlet

Following on from last year's Inventing Truth, HappenStance Press will be publishing my second pamphlet this September. I'm now putting the finishing touches to a manuscript that has taken me completely by surprise in the way it arose and then reached fruition. Suffice to say, I'm pretty excited as I read through and see how it's come to life. More details to follow over the coming days and weeks...