Poetry Reading

I'm reading a poem at The Troubadour this Monday 11 December. I'll be there from 6.00 to drink myself into the reading. The evening starts at 8.00. Come and join us.

The Troubadour

Slow movement

I've been searching for this recording of  the slow movement of Rodrigo's Concierto De Aranjuez. Now suddenly I found it again - probably 40 years after I first heard it. I think it is an extraordinary recording. I first heard it in the late 1970's but somehow I managed to lose track of my vinyl record. I'd moved home several times and then the CD thing happened. 

A few months ago I tried again to search it on YouTube and incredibly I found it. I thought I'd posted it to this blog but I can't find it. So here it is.

Enjoy!!

Andreas Scholl - Vivaldi's Nisi Dominus (Largo)

Just incredible!

Poetry reading tonight

I'm one of several poets reading at the Corner House Arts Centre in Surbiton this evening. It should be fun!

Click here for a link to their website.

If It Be Your Will - Leonard Cohen and The Webb Sisters

I'm writing a poem at the moment and have been drawn to this song / prayer / poem.

Saturn's Arctic

Below is the image I used for the poem Two Springs.

Although the photograph - taken  from the Cassini space probe in 2006 - uses false colour to highlight the complex weather systems at Saturn's arctic, I've written the poem based on this photograph rather than what you can actually observe on the planet.

Image credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA

Here is an edited reading of the poem I read at The Troubadour on the 26 June 2017

I hope you enjoy the poem

The Troubadour Coffee-House Poetry End of Season Party

It was a great end of season poetry party at The Troubadour last Monday night.

It was a great evening full of lively and interesting poetry from a whole range of poets. 

I loved every minute of it.

I'm incredibly grateful to Anne-Marie Fyfe who runs Coffee-House Poetry evenings at The Troubadour. She continues to be a support to me and hundreds of poets out there.

Greg Freeman was there with his own poem, a camera and note book. Here's a link to Write Out Loud where you can find the review of the evening. He even mentions me and quotes a line from the poem I read.

Poetry at The Troubadour 26 June at 7.30

On Monday 26 June there's a poetry party at The Troubadour in London.

It's going to be hot. It's going to be crowded. There's going to be music. There's going to be wine! There's going to be poetry.

Come and join us!

Richmond Park - A film

I found a 20 minute video made by the Friends of Richmond Park, produced by Media Trust and narrated by David Attenborough . I thought I might share it with you. 

The park has been an important place for me over many years. An inspiration! 

Good Friday music

There are 2 pieces of music I play on Good Friday.

The first is Allegri's Miserere performed by the Tallis Scholars. Here is a magnificent recording of it.

The second piece of music is John Taverner's Prayer of the Heart. Here is a recording of it from youtube

They are two incredible pieces of music.

I hope you find them helpful. 

Pink Floyd and Echoes

A good friend and I have a project to play every studio Album released by Pink Floyd. About once a week we get together and play the next record. On Thursday we played Meddle, released in 1971. So far we've played, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, A Saucerful of Secrets, More, Ummagumma, Atom Heart Mother, - we played Zabrinskie Point because I mislaid my copy of Meddle, and then last Thursday Meddle.

So far it's been a pretty dull affair. And I'd call myself a good fan of Pink Floyd.

I could probably name the number of good songs on two hands in these records. Oh okay then I will. They are Astronomy Domine, Interstella Overdrive and Bike. Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun, A Saucerful of Secrets and Jugland Blues, - the live set on Ummagumma - which includes Careful with that Axe Eugine, Granchester Meadows, Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast might have been included if it wasn't for the kitchen. Fearless - the football fan sound effects are fairly marginal and finally Echoes.

With Echoes there is a transformation in the sound. Suddenly everything is working together. The sound effects of whale song and crows cawing work incredibly well with Richard Wright's atmospheric keyboards and Dave Gilmore's stark guitar. The different movements of the piece and the shift from one movement to the next works very well for me. 

I've not heard the studio recording of Echoes for a very long time - decades in fact. But I have watched a live performance on youtube over the last few years. I think it is an amazing recording.

Anyway hearing the studio recording again I remembered why I'd become such a fan. Echoes stands the test of time. It had taken Floyd a long time to mature as a group. If I'd been following them since their UFO club days in 1967, I think I would have long given up on them. Honestly, its been a real trudge after the promise of Syd Barrett's songs- and even here there are some very low points, through hopeless film sound tracks, and then the Walter's early years. Then suddenly they emerge into the light for - if I was generous the next 4 and a half albums. But in truth only 2 and a half of the next 5 records.

Musically they were such a limited group. On Echoes I can still hear a Saucerful of Secrets and I can hear fragments of The Wall, recorded 13 years later. Echoes indeed! I wonder what it was that struck me about them? There really wasn't much to appeal to me.

The first time I heard Pink Floyd was sometime between 1974 and the summer of 1975. A friend led me into a record shop. Discoveries in Harrow. Outside were boxes filled with second hand records. There were rows of them. The front of the shop was a green grocer's. But at the back in a second room behind the Green grocers was the record shop. I still remember walking up to the counter. My friend must have said something to the guy behind the counter. Then silence. I waited till I could hear the first clicks of a clock, a synthesizer gathering definition, an overdubbed voice. I loved it. In those first 10 seconds of The Dark Side of the Moon my world had changed forever.   

The experience of the UFO club in London must have been very intense. Their fans must have been incredibly loyal, having to wait a tortuous 4 years before anything truly remarkable emerged.

Jason Bourne - a short review

Jason Bourne is a disappointing post script to the Bourne Trilogy - we won't even mention the Bourne Legacy - because this film - Jason Bourne - is far superior in so many ways. However it still fails to meet the quality of the original trilogy.

There was nothing new. Repetition of ideas began to creep in to the trilogy - but only once or twice. Watching Jason Bourne was revisiting the shadows or ghosts of the original scripts and episodes. There was nothing to raise the film above the other three. Car chases, one to one fight scenes, unrelenting action that rises with tension, falls and rises again to an even more extreme pitch were all done far better in the original. 

Jason Bourne is too crowded. There are epic crowd scenes especially in Athens. How did they do that? But in the end it contributed nothing positive.It left me feeling confused and dazed without the satisfaction of serious plot developments.

Jason Bourne is too fast. There's not enough time to develop character. Perhaps I'm just out of date. But showing is better than telling especially in film. And I need more than one establishing shot. I think, plot and character need to be established again and again from a variety of different perspectives. 
Because the action is so fast - we move all over the place - I began to loose faith in the physicality of the action. 

Plot. There were aspects of the plot that almost worked. I can believe that Nicky Parsons has grown a conscience and is now challenging the work of the security forces. I thought the narrative concerning social media and Wikileaks was also good ground to establish a plot line. But again these need to be simple and need time to develop carefully. 
Perhaps the trilogy allowed character and plot to develop over a three film arc. Now established Greengrass and Damon must have thought all they needed to develop was plot. But this was patchy and didn't really convince me of its fundamental value. 
OK! I can accept a revenge plot in which an asset exposed by Bourne wants him dead. But this is given a too lighter touch. David Webb's father Richard Webb didn't really take off at all. I want to write that it doesn't take much to establish these features - a few seconds here, a slow meditative shot there, but I'm aware I'm probably writing about a multi-million dollar enterprise in which those kinds of shots are just too expensive. 

So next time I come back to the Bourne films will I watch 3 or 4 films. Well maybe 4 next time. But thereafter probably only 3.

Jackself by Jacob Pooley - a short review - spoiler alert

When I came away from the T. S Eliot short list reading at the Royal Festival Hall in January this was the book I least expected to win. Alice Oswald seemed to me to me the front runner. So it took a little while for me to buy Jack Pooley's collection Jackself. Even once I'd bought it - in February, I reluctantly picked it up to read. And yes it took me a little while to get into this collection.

Perhaps I was put of by the cover - a dismembered paper cartoon puppet without a face. Or maybe the title. But whatever the reason. I struggled to begin with.

But it grew on me. Sometimes playful, sometimes dream like. At other times dark and disturbing. Jackself is a series of loosely linked poems about Jackself - Jacob Pooley's childhood in rural Cumbria.

There's a patchy narrative arc that begins with Jackself. Then poems about the friendship between Jackself and Jeremy Wren. They are adolescent, challenging, playful and disturbing in their behaviour, their conversations and their view of the world.

I enjoyed reading about rural and village life. It is descriptive and detailed. I enjoyed reading about  the boys friendship. It's both humorous and honest. The boys seem restless, adrift and without meaning. Except in their friendship. Sometimes. And yet I couldn't invest the poems with value. Perhaps that's down to Pooley writing from an adolescent perspective.  Maybe that is the nature of adolescence. 

But then Jeremy Wren dies. He commits suicide. I don't know why.  Pooley evokes a strong sense of loss and this is really powerful and moving? Is it? So I suppose I found the emotional distancing - not only with the death but throughout the collection - a struggle. I suppose I expected some kind of resolution, closure or healing. But there was none. That's not a weakness in the writing. It reveals my own immaturity as a reader and especially as a reader of contemporary poetry.

Oh well! Ho hum! I'll try and write a better review next time.   

Let Them Eat Chaos performed by Kate Tempest

Here is Kate Tempest performing her poem Let Them Eat Chaos.

Wow! I woke up at 4.00 am yesterday morning and couldn't get back to sleep. About 20 minutes later I was sitting in our sitting room, wrapped in a blanket, a reading light on and Kate Tempest's book - Let Them Eat Chaos in my hands.

I finished reading the book about 2 and a half hours later. Wow!

So I was in good company. Tempest's eight voices - the narrator plus Emily, Jenn, Pete, Zoe,  Bradley, joined me in that dark and disturbing hour where the poem is set at 4.18. That hour when we wake shadowed by our fears and anxieties. Joined me in a south London suburb - although mine significantly west of Tempest's - I guess.

I enjoyed best the presentation of these 7 personas. She depicts their different lives, one wealthy bored and restless, another - Pete, drunk or wasted on drugs fumbling his way home after a long night. Another voice comes home after a night shift as a carer. They are believable. Their anxieties and situations are realistic - perhaps she draws on her own experiences.

What I found quite difficult were the global concerns she addresses such as: capitalism, gentrification, celebrity culture, political corruption and global warming - I borrowed this list from the Guardian review. It's difficult addressing any one of these issues properly in any genre, but in poetry and all of them together is quite a challenge. Earnest - yes, heart felt - probably. But it's difficult to listen to a rant or a sermon.

But it is Kate Tempest herself that really shines through the book and the performance. I've attached it above. She's young, she's from south east London, she's incredibly articulate and her poetry and personality radiates a hard, fierce love.

Here's a link to the Guardian review and one from Dave Coats  

Bone Tomahawk - A Short Review

Bone Tomahawk

I watched this film late one night when my wife was a way for the weekend, and I didn't know how to end the day.

This was an impressive film.

For the most part this is a conventional Western. Set in the mid-west in a little town called Bright Hope. It begins with an attack on the small town by a group of savage cave dwellers. They are presented to us as a mysterious species human.  There's the killing a young stable boy and the abduction of two or three townspeople including a deputy sheriff - Nick and the doctor's wife, Samantha, played by Lili Simmons.

When her injured husband Arthur - played by Patrick Wilson  finds out about her abduction he immediately starts out to get her back. So a small posse - made up of Sheriff Hunt - Kurt Russell, John Brooder played by Matthew Fox and  Chicory - Richard Jenkins, - sets out on a five day trek across scrub land and desert to bring her and the others back.

Despite the conventional plot - of white woman and innocents, abducted by strangers - it is the writing that really appealed to me. The dialogue and the attention to character and the development of the relationships between the posse that really made this film special. From Arthur's simple Christian faith and single minded determination to rescue his wife, Brooder the fearless, maverick gunslinger, the Sheriff - plain speaking, responsible and honourable, and finally Chicory - an old deputy - his dead pan humour, he's completely loyal and determined to do the right thing. 

There is a quiet, natural and unassuming quality to the writing that really impressed me.
Apparently the writer / director rejected all attempts by studios to accept the film on the basis of changing the script. All praise therefore goes to S. Craig Zahler for his uncompromising position. 

However visually the film contains probably the most shocking act of on screen violence I've ever seen. Thankfully it is only one short scene lasting 20 seconds. But it continues to be disturbing every time I think about it. This is where the second film genre takes over - briefly yet successfully for being so brief. Horror.

Finally what struck me was the ending. The survivors of this encounter with unspeakable horror are the most unlikely characters.

This is a film that should have gained - given its great character actors and first class acting - a much wider audience. Kurt Russell is incredible I think.

Anyway if you don't believe me read this review of the film in the Daily Telegraph

I still couldn't end the day after watching this and stayed up a further 2 hours. I might post to this blog the results of that experience if I have time.

Falling Awake by Alice Oswald.

I've been enjoying reading Falling Awake by Alice Oswald. I think this latest collection is absolutely outstanding. I've only read the first half a dozen poems and I'm completely hooked.

The book won the Costa poetry prize for 2016. And it was short listed for the T. S. Eliot prize.

I remember when she won the T. S. Eliot prize for her book Dart. I was totally mesmerised by it. This collection is doing something similar.

Oswald is a nature poet. She's brutal and elemental in her depiction of her Dartmoor surroundings. She pays close attention to detail. She brings the reader up close to her subject. We are present with her at dawn, a dead swan or badger. On one level their is a mindful presence about the experience of reading. Or are we kneeling in reverence at her subjects. 

Her writing is accessible - and yet she is not comforting. There is a music in her language but the song is not easy. 

The Troubadour 20 February 2017 - "Weather Report"

Welcome to my 2017.

I'm one of about 50 poets who have been invited to read a poem at The Troubadour on Monday 20 February. 

It is always a dynamic and interesting evening with a wide range of poets and poetry.

It would be great if you came along.  

The theme of the evening is weather.

So you better come prepared.

Click here or on the picture Stormy Weather by Frederick Varley above for more details.