What's in a name?

Spanish is an extremely vivid language in its use of names for places and families. For example, one of my recent opponents in the local tennis league here in Almendralejo is called Antonio Matamoros (Antonio the moorkiller). Somehow, I don't think he''ll feel too comfortable if he ever has to book in to an hotel in Marrakesh.

As for places, the drive from here down to Seville first crosses a river/steam called El Arroyo Matasanos (the healthy-person killer). Its water must once have been poisonous. Meanwhile, a few miles further on is La Cuesta de la Media Fanega, a huge hill that I featured in a poem (first published in The Frogmore Papers) a few years ago as follows:

After the Airport


Driving home, this winter morning
tracks my route with a searchlight sun.
Past holm oaks I reach La Cuesta
de la Media Fanega
- otherwise Half-A-Bushel Hill -
change down, memorise number plates,
breathe in lorry fumes. Locals chose
the name because of what a mule
devoured while getting over it.
I make the top at last, still lost
for what might get me over you.

These days, it's just a decent drop of scenery from the new motorway, but my battered, ancient Peugeot 309 really struggled up that old road!

Too much of a good thing?

In his recent provocative article for Poetry magazine (see here), Joshua Mehigan remarks on the different visions that insiders and outsiders might have of the poetry world. He ends his feature as follows:

"In the end, poetry looks radical only to the outside world, which ignores it, while from inside it looks static. Poets got out of these situations before by doing something new, but novelty is superfluous now. There is no way to get into the game without upping the ante, and there is no way out without bluffing or folding or everyone agreeing on a new game. If you’ve been a poet for a while you might not see how bizarre it all seems, and how monotonous, but if you shake your head and look again as a human being, you might."

There are two fundamental issues at stake here. One involves the old battle lines drawn up between different poetic schools, a tired set of false divides and postures that lead nowhere near the core of poetry. However, Mehigan is also raising a second key point that does very much interest me...

...now that so many poets seem to view teaching creative writing as an ideal job, often after having taken a doctorate in the same subject, just how easy is it to lose perspective? When most of your waking hours are taken up by lecturing, workshopping or marking poetry, what undiscovered, unexpected spark is left for personal poetic renewal? When most of your daily conversations revolve around the poetic world and its codes, how difficult is it to keep remembering how verse might seem to someone from outside that reduced world? How does poetry change when it's inspired mainly by other poetry?

In this sense, I can only speak for myself. My verse builds over a lengthy period. This often involves unconscious processes. In other words, I often don't realise my mind has been worrying away at a poem until it pops out. If I were thinking about poetry during my working day, those processes would be destroyed. I need totally unrelated activity most of the time in order to allow my writing to flow.

I imagine many poets would disagree with me wholeheartedly, but that's the nature of the job, if a job is what it is...

What makes a good audience at a poetry reading?

So...what does make a good audience at a poetry reading?

Well, I remember my days at university when I did a lot of amateur dramatics (my partner would probably claim I've never given up!). My friends and I would always agree that we knew as soon as we walked on stage whether there was a good chemistry that night. If so, the performance grew accordingly.

Bearing in mind that you can see the audience's faces (the whites of their imaginations!) when giving a poetry reading, plus their inevitable sighs of boredom, emotion, frustration or satisfaction, frowns or grins, I find that feeling is multiplied these days. As soon as I get up on stage (or sometimes even beforehand when sitting in the audience myself), I just somehow immediately know what atmosphere awaits. As a consequence, my reading improves or slips.

Last Sunday at Tongues & Grooves in Portsmouth was a perfect example.They're an extremely welcoming group, not pretentious but very keen, attentive but never sycophantic. I enjoyed myself and so was able to give more enjoyment to them. What's more, Maggie Sawkins, the organiser, provided a Q & A session for the audience as soon as the reading itself had finished, thus enabling people to engage me in conversation and break down any possible remaining barriers.

I've read to packed houses elsewhere where a connection just couldn't be established, but I far prefer a small but perfectly formed bunch that really get involved. There were about thirty people at the venue on Sunday and I sold a dozen books, leaving with the sense that I'd managed to share my poems. I do hope they enjoyed them afterwardswith the added reference of how I read them aloud.

Now that really was a good audience for a poetry reading!

Reading in Portsmouth on Sunday

Just a reminder that I'll be reading in Portsmouth this coming Sunday thanks to Tongues & Grooves. The details are as follows:


Sunday 24th February from 8 p.m.
The Gun Room, RMA Tavern, Cromwell Road, Eastney.
Poetry from Matthew Stewart.
Music from Sue Apicella and Paul Horton of The Jelly Rollers.
Entry fee: £4.00 (includes free entry to raffle).
Open Mic - arrive early to book.

I'll be reading from both Inventing Truth and Tasting Notes and will bring a few copies along to sell on the night. I'm really looking forward to this one, especially as it will be the first chance for my mother to see me at one of my readings!

Kim Moore's If We Could Speak Like Wolves

Kim Moore's Smith/Doorstep pamphlet, If We Could Speak Like Wolves, was one of the most striking first books to appear in 2012 on the U.K. poetry scene. She writes with a very distinctive music, which is extremely unusual for a poet of such a young age, all within the framework of implicit narrative being driven through acute observation.

Michelle McGrane is featuring her verse today over at Peony Moon. There's an excellent selection up, giving an enticing flavour of the delights to be found inside If We Could Speak Like Wolves. It will be worthwhile following Kim Moore's poetic progress closely over the next few years. I'm intrigued as to just what avenues she might explore.

Spain in a mess

This blog rarely enters the dodgy realm of politics, but I just can't ignore the current situation in Spain. The national picture is perhaps best summed up by a recent BBC article on how corruption is rife at all levels of society. It's very much worth a read and you can find it here.

The story in Extremadura, however, is even bleaker. Down here in Spain's poorest region, all the national problems do exist, but they are also compounded. On a nationwide basis, the housing boom has come to an abrupt halt, waiting for an economic revival. Nevertheless, in Extremadura, that revival is inconceivable to us on the ground. The boom was fuelled by E.U. subsidies that have inevitably run out and are being diverted to other member states. We're now left with the ruins of a house of cards and few resources to rebuild the local economy on a stable basis.

There's a whole lost generation in the area, men in their thirties and forties without education who worked on building sites and made a lot of money a few years ago. Those few years seem a long way off! People have been surviving on their savings and their parents' pensions, but the endgame is now stepping up a gear. Row after row of boarded-up shops line the town centre of Almendralejo and units are for sale throughout the industrial estate, yet this is just the start. The problem's now gone beyond bickering politics, as the very fabric of Extremaduran society is starting to come asunder. I shudder to think what the next few months may bring.

Lydia Fulleylove

Lydia Fulleylove first came to my attention when her poem Night Drive was shortlisted for the 2010 Forward Prize. It was the Saturday poem in The Guardian on 25th September that same year and you can read it here. Night Drive is an exceptional piece, one of those rare poems that manage to carve themselves into your memory forever. Fulleylove's use of language is all the more intense for its restraint.

However, she's far more than a one-hit wonder. Fulleylove published a pamphlet, titled Notes on Land and Sea, with HappenStance Press in 2011, and her collection shows just how important the sea around the Isle of Wight (where she lives) is to her poetry. What's more, her experience in working as a tutor on creative writing projects in prisons, schools,etc, also shows through, as in her poem Visit, which you can read on her website here. It evokes an inmate's longing for the sea, and it really struck home with this reader.

In the context of the respect I have for her work, I was delighted when Lydia Fulleylove approached me last year with the suggestion that we do a reading together. I'll be travelling over to the U.K. later on this month to read alongside her at Tongues & Grooves in Portsmouth (see here for more details). Suffice to say, I'm very much looking forward to seeing and hearing her make those terrific poems come to life!