On the menu in St Andrews...

Just what will be on the menu in St Andrews on Friday 15th November?

Well, there will be a fair few tapas of this on toast...

Plus lots of carving and scoffing of this...

Washed down with glasses of this...

With readings from this alongside...

All of the above for less than a tenner. You can get hold of a ticket here!

Patricia Beer on middle age

My recent trip to the U.K. wasn't for a pleasant reason (a family funeral), but it did give me the chance to browse in my favourite secondhand bookshops. I love the thrill of leafing through poetry collections and often making discoveries.

One such case on this occasion was Patricia Beer's Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1988). Later research on the internet indicated that there was more verse from her after that date, but this book still gives a very decent introduction to her work.

Beer's poetry must have been very unfashionable in the eighties and nineties, and it probably still is in many respects. However, she's capable of lovely turns of phrase, coherent fusing of narrative and ideas, and some stunning endings. I was particularly taken with one piece, titled Middle Age, especially in the context of the motive for my visit. Here are two extracts from the beginning and the ending of the poem:

"Middle age at last declares itself
As the time when could-have-been
Is not wishful thinking any more...

...Everywhere I look it is the same,
The churchyard or the other side of the bed,
The one who is not lying there
Could have been."

The circularity is both satisfying and eye-opening. The reader is left to contemplate "who" "could have been" in their own lives. It's a terrific poem.

Thank you once again, secondhand bookshop.

Tasting Notes and StAnza at the St Andrews Food and Drink Festival

I'm really looking forward to my next reading in St Andrews on 15th November. Here's the background to the event, taken from the St Andrews Food and Drink Festival website:

"Working with StAnza, Matthew Stewart, exporter and blender for the Spanish cooperative Viñaoliva, leads a guided tasting and talks about the blender’s art. Matthew is also a poet – his entertaining Tasting Notes were published by Fife’s HappenStance Press in 2012. There will be time for interaction and questions, as he introduces the wine of poetry, and the poetry of wine.  Guests will have the chance to taste four Zaleo wines (Pardina 2012, Rosado 2012, Tempranillo 2012 and Premium 2010) and food pairings of ham, bread and Spanish cheese."

£7.50 or £5.00 conc.
[To include tasting, copy of Tasting Notes, and tapas.]

Booking link - https://www.eventbrite.com/event/9010489617

If you're in the area, what could be better than four glasses of wine, a poetry pamphlet and gorgeous tapas alongside, all for less than a tenner? I hope to see you there!

Half a comma

I've always been intrigued by the way poets deal with line breaks when giving a reading. Many skip them entirely, often arguing that they are purely a effect to be seen on a page. However, such a view undermines the necessary marrying of content and form, of the aural and the visual. It implicitly lends weight to the school of "chopped-up prose".

Nevertheless, opposing techniques don't convince me either. One such example was a reading by the renowned Spanish poet Jorge Riechmann in Badajoz a few years ago. He placed such an emphasis on his line breaks, marking them with such deliberation, that all flow was lost. Artifice took over.

So, all of the above begs the question: how do I deal with line breaks myself? Well, I refuse to ignore them. What's more, if I want my reader to notice a slight hiatus on the page, I'd also like my audience to feel that same slight pause. My best stab at an explanation would be that I treat a line break as half a comma. That's not a rule. It's not a norm. It's simply the way I imagine my poem being read aloud while I write it, and it's a fundamental part of the music I try to convey when standing up in front of a microphone.

Here it is!

Tasting Notes - a poetry film by Matthew Stewart from Matthew Stewart on Vimeo.

The online premiere

After several months of graft, I'm pleased to be able to announce that the online premiere of Tasting Notes, a poetry film, will be on Wednesday 2nd October. The absence of a red carpet won't stop me being pretty excited!

New Walk 7

New Walk 7 will be heading out to subscribers in the next few weeks. I'm delighted to report that it will be featuring a recent poem by myself (titled Sooner or Later) alongside work by John Ashbery, Sujata Bhatt, Mark Ford, Carrie Etter and other high-quality poets. Why not visit the New Walk website here to get your hands on a copy of what is fast becoming one of the most significant poetry journals around?