Tim Love on Whatever You Do, Just Don't

Tim Love is a scrupulous reviewer, bringing an analytical, scientific eye to bear on the poetry he tackles. This is why I'm especially chuffed he should have reviewed Whatever You Do, Just Don't so positively on his Litrefs Reviews site (see link here).

Tim Love reviews The Knives of Villalejo

I've long admired Tim Love's work as a poet, blogger and reviewer. His reviewing style is idiosyncratic: analytical and detailed, often with a statistical twist, and always forthright. As a consequence, I'm very pleased to report that he's posted a highly engaged and engaging review of The Knives of Villalejo on his Litrefs Reviews site. You can read it here.

The rootlessness of professional poets...?

In his recent blog post about the relationship between his verse and his day job, Tim Love remarks on how many young U.K. poets are forced to chase residencies and short-term contracts from place to place. He highlights their consequent sense of disconnection.

I would argue that many professional poets do actually feel a sense of community, via their colleagues and social media, etc. However, I'm not at all sure whether such physical or virtual surroundings are entirely beneficial to their verse. I can think of several examples of such poets whose early work I enjoyed far more than later books. I admired them when their poetry was anchored in experiences and a feeling of belonging that necessarily lie beyond academia.

Let's take a successful young poet with poems in top-notch mags and a well-received first collection. What's the next step? This is not just a question of careers: the course of a whole life depends on such choices.

Is poetry a vocation or a job? Will an alternative career take over or leave time to write? Will creativity be boosted or stunted by the constant company of other poets? Will an unusual approach end up being over-rounded and homogenised or will it be honed and perfected?

Tim Love on Tasting Notes

As mentioned previously on Rogue Strands, Tim Love's blogs are an excellent source of information on the U.K. poetry scene. They're definitely worth following as a point of departure for discussion and thought. A few days ago he posted a very positive review of Tasting Notes, plus a photo (from the launch event in London) of me carving that gorgeous ham. You can find both here.

Syllabics - an explanation

I was intrigued by remarks made by Tim Love in his review of Inventing Truth, plus his exchange with Sheenagh Pugh in the comments section of the same article, about the use of syllabics in poetry. Love stated "it had to be pointed out to me that the poems are syllabics", while Pugh replied with "I have never, ever noticed that a poem was in syllabics before it was pointed out".

These statements run contrary to my own poetic methods and are thus terrific points of departure for an explanation of my use of syllabics:

I'm 100% convinced there's a subtle syllabic music that runs through English-language poetry and lyrics, lying just below the stresses, often drowned out by the heavier resonance of the latter. When writing poems I never need to count syllables - I instinctively notice and feel them. In other words, an iambic pentameter is a decasyllabic line at the same time. If you are counting stresses you are inevitably and implicitly counting syllables too, as stress patterns are made up of clustered syllables.

What's undeniable is that stresses are a key element to the rhythms of English, far more than in languages such as Spanish, in which metrics are always pure syllabics. By this I mean that any English-language poet writing in syllabics simply must also be aware of stresses. I find that syllabics enables me to play with anapests, iambs, dactyls and trochées within a musical framework, a game that inversely provides me with greater freedom to do so than in free verse, all because the whispering music of syllabics underpins them. Rather than ignoring stresses, I'm doing quite the opposite, using them to create and disrupt aural expectations, seeking to bring together musical effects and semantics.

Editors', readers' and other poets' reactions to my use of syllabics have always been split, in that roughly half have fallen into the Pugh-Love camp, unaware of my metrics until they were pointed out. A large number, however, have instinctively and immediately picked up on my technique.

I'd like to end this post by underlining that it's not meant to be some kind of defence of my poetic methods. Quite the reverse: I hope it provokes thought and I welcome comments below.

Nostalgia

Tim Love has posted a positive and thought-provoking review of Inventing truth on his Lit Refs Reviews blog, expressing doubts about my constant brevity and use of syllabics, yet also very much enjoying certain poems. He states that "they have the Larkinesque lift that gives the reader the escape velocity to be launched beyond the text."

I always relish reading his pieces, as they pull no punches and state clear views, enabling me to react and reassess my views of the poetry in question. In this case, of course, my feelings are intensified because he's dealing with my own book!

I was especially intrigued by his conviction that "nostalgia...comes through in many pieces." This led me to my dictionary in search of a definition:

"Sentimental yearning for a period of the past; wistful memory of an earlier time".

For me, the key words here are "sentimental" and "wistful" - one of my main aims is to avoid both in my treatment of the past and the U.K.. I'm all too aware that these feelings are typical in many ex-pats and I'm thus determined to dodge such a trap. What's more, I believe the added perspective of Spain casts an extra ambiguity and ambivalence over my memories, rather than lending them a rose-tinted hue. "Nostalgia" is the last word I'd use to describe my work!

This leaves me with a key doubt: why does Love invoke the term? In other words, I've discovered an intrinsic value to such a generously forthright review. I'll now reread Inventing truth in the light of his remarks. Whether I agree or disagree with his views of the book, they'll provide a wonderful basis for further thought. I'm extremely thankful to him!

Tim Love's Lit Refs Blogs

Tim Love has been publishing poetry on the U.K. magazine scene for a long time now. He currently has a pamphlet, titled Moving Parts, out with Happenstance, and I'm very much looking forward to getting hold of a copy.

For many years he's maintained his Lit Refs website, which he's now moving into a blog format. I thoroughly recommend a trawl through - there's an abundance of fascinating material both for novices and experienced readers and poets.

The new structure is set up in three strands: the main, most "bloggish" section, archived articles and archived reviews. Lit Refs has helped me on many occasions in the past, and this new format enables us to keep up with Love's constant updates. He's always subjective and forthright, which lends the blogs a real sense of an authentic perspective on U.K. poetry over the past few years and the present day. They are an excellent resource.