"The Verb"

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At 10.15pm - that is in one minute - there is a choice. You can either tune in to hear the last two thirds of this week's programme live or go to the I-Player and catch last Friday's edition just in time. Only the 30 minutes of it remaining!



Ian and the Verb New Voices

The Verb New Voices were interesting enough. Bohdan Piasecki, from Poland, read a poem based on a "How To Learn English" book. John Osborne from Norwich described a train journey in a piece called "Listening to Stuart Maconie" while Kuwaiti-born poet Fatima Al Matar focussed on silence when it has sound.

Joe Dunthorne's short story about his girlfriend's conjunctivitis very effectively captured the ordinary and yet unusual concerns of people when they suddenly find they are unwell. His ability to bring to life dialogue and settings in an identifiable way should see that he goes far.

The highlight for me though was the very unusual performance by Gilli Bloodaxe, Geoff Hearn and Monty Oxymoron about a mythical creature roaming the Sussex Downs called "The Bitchling Deacon". I can't say that I've ever seen him whenever I have strolled to the Jack and Jill windmills. Nevertheless, it is certainly my kind of wordplay!

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Friday 8 July 2011

The details of this week's programme:

(Not all the links and extracts were discussed in the programme. They are included to provide an introduction to, or reminder of, those featured.)

In this week’s programme, Ian McMillan took to the stage again in front of an audience at the Radio Theatre in London. He was joined by:

Irish chanteuse Mary Coughlan who explained how she is pulled to songs by the lyrics.

Love Will Tear Us Apart - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iORqV...eature=related

Novelist Joanne Harris who revealed her ongoing passion for the work of Mervyn Peake.

Steerpike - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jm7XxvcIbJU

The poet Daljit Nagra who read from his new collection.

Poetry Reading For Oxfam - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qzlab...eature=related

The storyteller Rachel Rose Reid with a song story stretching from the Peasants' Revolt to the G20 protests.

Marcie - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXfm66UlMkQ

The Verb - Every Friday, Now starts at 10pm, Radio 3

Also available for seven days on BBC I-Player

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Review of "The Verb" broadcast on 8 July 2011 - Part 1

This edition, an almost live broadcast from the Radio Theatre, began with a rousing singalong of "Ilkley Moor B'ah T'at". The tune of it anyway which many of you will surely know as "Cranbrook". The lyrics had been changed appropriately to "You're Welcome To The Verb". I understand that some of the audience wore party hats so the context here is important.

There was a very warm welcome to chanteuse Mary Coughlan who has now been alcohol free for seventeen years. If this sounds slightly impertinent, Mary's autobiography "Bloody Mary" describes in a funny, moving and outspoken way her early battles with the bottle. When her album "The House of Ill Repute" was released to great acclaim in 2009, Sunday Times Culture wrote "the night-time devils of her childhood have finally been exorcised". The Guardian focussed more on her musical style declaring that "Tom Waits has met his match".



Mary Coughlan

Mary's rendition of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" was sublime. This is no mean achievement for the song is associated so closely with the late Ian Curtis of Joy Division. A fellow troubled soul, the connections between the two are obvious. There have been disastrous versions by a wide range of artists quite unable to convey more emotional experience. The sensitive piano accompaniment on this piece and "Poison Words", the other song she performed, brought to mind the arrangements on songs recorded by June Tabor. Mary's voice, though, has hints of Billie Holiday whose life she has honoured in shows. Her presentation is admirably no frills and no elongation. However, what impresses most is her respect for the material.

Joanne Harris was invited onto the stage to discuss her enthusiasm for Mervyn Peake. This year is the centenary of his birth and the BBC's coverage of this anniversary is being discussed in a separate thread. Ian described his novels as midway between reality and a Freudian dream. Comparisons were made with Dylan Thomas and Joanne and Ian agreed that there were very strong similarities with William Blake. Both Peake and Blake would often use words as if they were fireworks or paints. "Lush", "fantastical", "apocalyptic", "visionary" and, less flatteringly, "overwrought"....these are the words that are frequently used to describe Peake's writing. The language is generally dense and sometimes strange. He was essentially a writer of youth and revolt. Joanne explained how she had discovered him at the age of 15 which she has always felt was exactly the right time.



Mervyn Peake - Gormenghast

Perhaps of greatest fascination to today's readers is Peake's scattergun approach to self-expression. In "Gormenghast" and its offshoot "A Boy in Darkness" he turns rapidly from prose to poetry and then to artwork. Had he still been alive, Joanne thought that he would have revelled in the possibilities offered by the I-Pad. You can see how he coped with simple pen and paper at the exhibition "The Worlds of Mervyn Peake" which continues in the British Library until 18 September.

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Review of "The Verb" broadcast on 8 July 2011 - Part 2

Daljit Nagra was back on the programme following his popular appearance earlier this year. A poet of considerable confidence and dexterity, his second collection "Tippoo Sultan’s Incredible White-Man-Eating Tiger Toy-Machine!!!" is to be published by Faber & Faber in August. Readers might wish to discuss whether it is punglish poetry or bollyverse. What though is very clear is that it features tales of love, education, post-colonialism and penis size.

He read the new sonnet "Phallacy" and of course it is entirely up to you whether you feel that is best left to your imaginations. Characteristically, this and other poems in the book combine high form and street low language to bring comic ideas together. The length of the mysterious book title is not an indication of any unfortunate shortfall in the content. If it is anything like "Look We Have Coming to Dover", readers are in for a treat.

I should add that Daljit can write in several stylistic "languages" and speak them too. Still, he admits to having difficulties with Yorkshire which sadly he finds he can only write. Ian therefore read a part of "The 13 O'Clock News" which requires its use and concerns the ultimate journalist one hundred years in the future. My investigations have failed to establish whether the guy works for a new improved NewsCorp but it is probably best to hear the poem without thinking of what passes for the real world.



Daljit Nagra - New Collection

And so to the excellent Rachel Rose Reid who performed "London Stone" with the Roundhouse Experimental Choir. Rachel has asked me to thank our forum for mentioning her work and has suggested a clip that you might like to see. More representative of her work than the one I included in the preview, it shows a part of her show "I'm Hans Christian Andersen" which some of you may recall we discussed when she was on "The Verb" last winter. Original and entertaining, it is recommended viewing and all you need to do to view it is click right here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DuJEn0gIrE.

Rachel's singing voice is of a quality that would of its own stand her in good stead. However, her leaning is towards a highly innovative performance style that is both captivating and daring. Her song stories explore the textures and rhythms of soundscape with startling changes in scenario, perspective and pace. In combining and often alternating between the present day, history and mythicism, her themes are developed using eerie sounds and several narrative voices to provide a sense of echoing resonance.



Rachel Rose Reid

Rachel has described her background as part urban and part folk scene and this was clearly evident on this programme. For example, the London Stone in the title is located on Cannon Street in the City of London and it is said to be the place from which the Romans measured all distances in Britannia. Rarely questioned by shoppers in the nearby Nike shop, it is meaningful enough to have been permanently retained. In Rachel's story, it becomes a symbolic meeting point for protest which in the current drought of protest singers is to be applauded.

As I was listening to the performance, and doing my best to place it, I jotted down a wide range of attempted associations - Peter Ackroyd, The Good, the Bad and the Queen, Charles Dickens, Malcolm McLaren, Chumbawamba, Hanif Kureishi, The Watersons, Negativland, freeform jazz. None of these though come close to conveying the feelings in, and essence of, this work. As an art form, it seems both local and expansive so that while it will merrily appear to chip away at the surfaces, there is an impression that it contains knowledge hewn from deep foundations. Her future projects are destined to be very keenly anticipated by many.

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Friday 15 July 2011

The details of this week's programme:

(Not all the links and extracts will be discussed in the programme. They are included to provide an introduction to, or reminder of, those featured.)

On this weeks programme presented by Ian McMillan:

Actor Simone Kirby reads a new story by playwright Billy Roche, about a woman who has run away from her husband in Ireland and he finds her working in a pub in West London. Billy joins Ian from Dublin to discuss the story, and talks about the importance of its setting - the pub, like the story, is called the Dog and Bone.

Lay Me Down Softly - http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2011...-softly-review

The Cavalcaders - http://www.britishtheatreguide.info/...caders-rev.htm

Chuquai Billy who is the only Native American stand up comedian in the UK. The humour is self deprecating but Billy says that's developed since he's lived in England rather than intrinsic to his Chocktaw and Lakota Sioux tribal background.

An American Redwolf in London - http://www.remotegoat.co.uk/review_view.php?uid=3579

James Davies, a poet and 'literary activist' based in Manchester. His new book, Plants, contains 'unmade poems' - poems that he has written in the past and deleted. Like the poem 'Apples'. Poet Carol Watts joins Ian and James to give a history of the unmade poem.

Great Works - http://www.greatworks.org.uk/poems/jd1.html

Carol on Reality Street - http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/carol-watts.php

And on the first night of the Proms, a reminder about Radio 3's poetry competition. Ian writes a poem inspired by the rarely performed Rossini opera, William Tell; and music critic Susan Hitch talks about the myth of William Tell.

Interview with Dr Rowan Williams - http://www.archbishopofcanterbury.or...-on-dostoevsky

The Verb - Tonight, 10pm, Radio 3

Also available for seven days on BBC I-Player

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CRUNCH!

Would you Adam and Eve it? Just as I return, it disappears. That was the final edition of the season. It will be available on the I-player until Friday and a review will follow later in the week. Here's hoping that future series are not affected by Le Crunch:

THE VERB TO GIVE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JSiMKvY-4zc



apple – verb: an activity intended to foster a positive emotional connection between an individual and a specific information technology device, solution or service.

Adam and Eve - http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:A...7u_Y1NocDDeN7Q

Holiday photo of Ian McMillan - http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2009/...42_468x286.jpg

summer weather report for london - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gujw_U0uR5k

(pursuit of the woman with the feathered hat - zawinul, prom 46, 18-8-11)



Apples

Behold the apples’ rounded worlds:
juice-green of July rain,
the black polestar of flowers, the rind
mapped with its crimson stain.

The russet, crab and cottage red
burn to the sun’s hot brass,
then drop like sweat from every branch
and bubble in the grass.

They lie as wanton as they fall,
and where they fall and break,
the stallion clamps his crunching jaws,
the starling stabs his beak.

In each plump gourd the cidery bite
of boys’ teeth tears the skin;
the waltzing wasp consumes his share,
the bent worm enters in.

I, with as easy hunger, take
entire my season’s dole;
welcome the ripe, the sweet, the sour,
the hollow and the whole.

Laurie Lee



(Sunshine://Smile)

CRUNCH THE CARD GAME - http://www.crunchthecardgame.com/

Some music from the Seventies - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t9qAcV4dFbQ

BBC Proms Poetry Competition - http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/features/poetry-competition

PROM 2 - WILLIAM TELL - http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/whats-on/2011/july-16/3

THE VERB TO BE - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lf4sAe1OTwY

VADRUM - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j3vLQ7iCz94



PLEASE STAY TUNED TO BBC RADIO 3

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Review of "The Verb" broadcast on 15 July 2011 - Part 1

In the final programme of the season, there was a further plug for the Poetry Proms Competition. Susan Hitch joined Ian to discuss Rossini's "William Tell" which was performed by the Orchestra and Chorus of the Academu of Saint Cecilia on 16 July. Susan explained that while the opera was written in the early 19th century, the legend of Tell is considered to date back to the 1500s. A play by Schiller, first performed in 1804, had led to renewed interest in the light of 18th and 19th century revolutions.

Tell was described as an independent, heroic figure who represents how the Swiss even now view their national identity. Every child knows that he used a bow and arrow to strike an apple balanced on his son's head. Some might be surprised to hear that this was not a voluntary act of machismo. It was a punishment for not obeying the instructions Gessler the overlord for all townsfolk to bow before a hat he had placed on a pole.



William Tell

In their wide-ranging discussion of this happy father with a cool nerve, Ian and Susan noted how he had evolved into a rescuer of the people. They also contemplated how the son had been equally brave but was rarely appreciated as such. They felt that the tale itself evoked the auditory more than the visual for one naturally thinks of the thrum and the twang of the arrow and the sound of the apple as it cracks. And then there was a very British version of the myth that features Adam Bell, William of Cloudsley and Clym of the Clough.

Ian read his own poem “William Told” which he said was inspired by “Hiawatha” and “Up the Junction” by Squeeze. It will be interesting to see if any of the entries in the competition focus more closely on the opera. There are, of course, plenty of other pieces in the Proms to inspire from Lully through Liszt and onto Larcher. There is information on how you can take part on this thread at post number 66.



Chuquai Billy

Ex-singer Chuquai Billy is the only Native American Indian stand-up on the UK comedy circuit. Having lived in this country for nine years, he has incorporated in his act the British sense of irony while essentially remaining loyal to his roots and traditions. On the programme, he gave us some wry observations about weekend courses and those who attend them with the risk of suddenly becoming new age disciples. He also wittily observed how Corporate America and even Government can be overly keen to incorporate concepts of American Indians in everyday language - Ford Apache, Washington Redskins, Obama as Geronimo.
.
In 2009, Nathan Brent wrote of Billy’s show “An American Redwolf in London” that while he came across as “very likeable, very affable and, for most of his act, very funny”, the performance was “uneven” and “disparate”. He described it as “more like a workshop…..than fully formed”. From what we heard on “The Verb”, I would say that this is still an apt description of his style. A nice enough guy but in truth I probably wouldn’t travel far to see him as the raw material does need to be fine-tuned.

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Review of "The Verb" broadcast on 15 July 2011 - Part 2

If Chuquai Billy's delivery is a trifle laid back, spare a thought for James Davies. Some of his poetry in the collection "Plants" could appear to meet the definition of half-hearted. On this week's programme, he read several of his "unmades". These take the audience into the mind of someone who is in the process of drafting a poem. Our usual assumptions of what it is that denotes completion of a piece of writing are challenged by Davies in what he presents to us. The process is the finished article with all of the doubts that this entails:

"Apples

Written, typed, altered, delted

15.07.05"

If that is a poem to you, and you find it stimulating, this book might just be the one for you. Clearly Carol Watts enjoyed it for she waxed lyrically about is comedic effect - "hilarious" - and then sought to place it squarely in the literary tradition. She mentioned in this context "Tristram Shandy", a novel about the difficulty of writing a novel, and Tom Raworth's sequence "Stag Skull Mounted" in the 1971 publication "Moving". As for me, the one thing the "unmades" didn't do was move me, not at least in any positive sense emotionally.



Plants by James Davies

In fairness, there are longer poems in "Plants" that move beyond the "unmade" principle. "Later", for example, begins:

"Head": Chats a mean conversation
"Bacon": Comes early for Christmas with his ucky buns present
I totted a goblin"

Now I am a fan of the poet e e cummings and also the originally innovative artists of the fluxus movement. There is arguably something too of their artistic endeavours in Davies's range. Regrettably his work also brings to mind the "Emperor's New Clothes" for it sits in that very modern context of anxieties about being conned. Davies describes himself as a "literary activist" and it is typical of his unsettling nature that it is hard to tell whether that description is ironic. While he less than obviously rallies against many of the well-established norms, any real effort and energy seems at times to be left entirely in the hands of the reader. Like his fellow Mancunians, the Gallagher brothers, his craft is probably more taut than is suggested by all of the studious slackness. Certainly, though, as a commercial device, he journeys in the direction of requiring attention. And, of course, he sets us up to work hard on him with a highly pretentious subtitle - "The instabilities of definitions and the volatility of signs and signifiers".

All it then takes is for a bunch of enthusiasts to head off rapidly towards their own Pseuds Corner. One writes, I kid you not, " The exuberant crypto-Flarf of (the poem) "Kate Bush" is particularly notable in its aim to subvert a method which itself aims to be subversive, a sort of compulsive, recursive, permanent revolution". Another describes "Plants" in these terms :"Cinch-backed poems are piled high with name-teasing. Planxties of hom-bo hin-jam merriment abound". In each case, it would have been better to have written "deleted". That I have looked into this book perhaps more than any other work ever featured on the programme shows that I too have somehow fallen for it. However, ultimately what it leaves me with is resentment and a feeling of empty entrapment.

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Review of "The Verb" broadcast on 15 July 2011 - Part 3

Billy Roche is an Irish playwright who is best known for the three full length plays that form the Wexford Trilogy. Twenty and more years ago, these portraits of small town Ireland received huge critical acclaim, winning four awards and a nomination for an Olivier Award for Outstanding Achievement. While he has often covered other ground, his main theme continues to be the claustraphobic nature of living in a small community. When everyone knows everyone else's business, do you stay behind in your home town or take your chances in a dead end job in England?

So it is with "The Dog and Bone", a sequel to "Sussex Gardens", which was written and performed on "The Verb" back in 2005. As with the earlier story, which featured the same characters, Simone Kirby was the perfect choice for the narration of this tale of a woman with deep regret and anxiety. Fresh from "getting right inside the skin of Molly Sweeney", she returned to the programme as the wife of Tommy Sheridan. He was the man who her character had left, along with her community and her country, to experience a better quality of life.



Simone Kirby with Gary Lydon

The Billy who is not Chuquai specialises in capturing the everyday speech of those who, like him, were born in the South East of Ireland. His meticulous drafting and attention to detail - Michael Billington once described him as "Chekhovian" - might well have been insufficiently rewarded had someone other than Simone given this piece voice. She was able to provide precisely the right inflections to a still very Irish woman just about living in our capital city on her nerves. Full of doubts about the frequent disappearances of her partner - he is an inveterate womanizer, a gambler in debt, a man who in all ways increasingly steals from her - she often falls back inadvertently on the language of her youth.

As he works his "fingers like a talking dog", she ekes out a living by pulling pints at the local pub. The atmosphere there is as full of rumour and small talk as in any place she has ever known. She hears, for example, that Tommy has been spotted looking for her and she is frightened how any meeting could put him in control. In some ways perhaps she is relieved also to be told that he has a new girlfriend who is "like a spitfire" by all accounts.

Ian discussed with Billy both his highly descriptive phraseology and his passion for keeping the language of Wexford active. While accepting the importance to him of the latter, the author said that he is unjustifiably credited with lines that could be heard most days on any ordinary street corner. He mentioned the phrase "dying alive" about someone which is very frequently used to indicate being madly in love. One wondered whether as much in her verbal expression as her thoughts and relationships, this woman, who felt so committed to the idea of personal freedom, was seemingly born to exist with what for her were disabling constraints.



Billy Roche

Billy Roche is my kind of writer and I would see him as being to Ireland what Kelman is to Scotland and Sillitoe and Barstow were to England. He is able to convey precisely the fraught and yet indomitable spirit in routine living. That from me is high praise for I am a fan of all three of those writers. "The Dog and Bone" was a tremendous ending to the last edition of "The Verb" this season, notwithstanding Ian's poem "William Told" which officially brought it to conclusion!

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THE VERB WILL BE BACK - WE PROMISE!

So there it is for now - the naming of parts one through to three - and what a great series it has been. For 45 minutes every Friday, the Rolling Stones were wrong. You can always get what you want. Now the irreparably curious will be filling the chasm with some useful Californian therapy. Meanwhile our genial host Ian Mc M will be musing in a well-deserved retreat. My money is on Bridlington but I've been there before. It is how I came to end up on the streets.

Do not fear all verbanites and verbists. Verburgers, fret ye not. And to the verbose I say just this. Whatever you do, take good care of yourselves throughout the summer season because I know how really tough it can be to get through these weeks without the programme and I must confess that I have always found it personally to be spectacularly good so the fact that we have to do without it for a while just leaves me utterly, in fact quite ashamedly, lost for words unfortunately.

How am I doing? Oh yes. I will be keeping the batteries charged on our wireless's weekly pot-pourri. Mark Thompson has received a chicken biryani with an order. "Turn that studio into a grade listed building!" He has already sent me a two line acknowledgment which is always far nicer than two words of one syllable. The Kent anarchists are even helping me to enhance the signal out of Wrotham. There, I told you it could be done by using a soupcon of big welly! Just take the phone off the hook in case they try to ring. They might have seemed nice in that olde worlde tea shop on the edge of Westerham Green. You can never be too careful.



Ian McMillan

Aye, you are quite right and I am glad you have said it. So much of this bodes well for a powerfully efficacious new season. I don't have a date yet - how often have I said that? - but normality should return during the post-Prom Chartist-style rebellion. I will be William Lovett. That's what Alice Nutter says she wants. It could be cool depending on who is sponsoring it. And here's the time travel bit. When I went with my Nan to see John Cooper Clarke and she did the pogo with one of the Buzzcocks, I really felt that life couldn't get any better. I was wrong. The cabaret of the word arrived. Suddenly I was Neil Armstrong. I became the personification of awe in space and, man, is that space ever "possible".

So even if you die alive in mid-August, finding that romance is dropping new dreams upon hearts rising wildly to the seagulls, you really won't want to miss the next series. Believe me. A bucket and spade is all very well but life is not just a sandcastle. Keep it "Verb" in your thoughts and whatever you do don't delete. That would be ignoramusical. Now where exactly was I when strangely it all ended? Oh yes, "I totted a goblin". "Someone's ringing the front bell". "I can't find my slippers". "Erm, repeat repeat".

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SUSTENANCE (2)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOWIRwTzGQs

This Is Not About Me - http://www.independent.co.uk/multime...OOK_62300t.jpg

Post-Glastonbury - http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/fi...e_1119992c.jpg

Bigging Up The Phrasal Verb Database - http://www.usingenglish.com/referenc...verbs/new.html

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean rows will I have there, a hive for the honeybee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a-glimmer, and noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements gray,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.

Do Deep Sea Fish Have Ears? - http://weirdseamonsters.com/new-disc...ish-have-ears/

Salford - Integrity and Industry - http://www.grovesandwhitnall.co.uk/i...d_cbc_arms.jpg

Post Modern Classicism - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T79YWTc7HvU



IT'S BACK FOR THE NEW TERM! - SUSSED, SOMETIMES FISHY, NOT ABOUT ME AND REALLY FREE

Everyone's happy - even at the BBC - http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/...n_1054009c.jpg

16 SEPTEMBER 2011 - AT VERBISH TIME GMT ON BURGER KING RADIO 3 - 'ECK AS LIKE

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Friday 16 September 2011

The details of this week's programme:

(Not all the links and extracts are discussed in the programme. They are included to provide an introduction to, or reminder of, those featured.)

Ian McMillan presents a new season of Radio 3's Cabaret of The Word.

Janice Galloway writes and performs an especially commissioned new story, and talks about her new memoir All Made Up, which covers her teenage years, and how secondary school opened up new cultural worlds for her. The first part of her life story, This is Not About Me, won praise for its minute detail of childhood perception.

This Is Not About Me - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...ay-966711.html

Mike Scott from the Waterboys describes how he has created a suite of Yeats's poetry set to rock'n'roll music, and performs excerpts in The Verb studio.

Old England - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UOkx99RFaY

The Lake Isle of Innisfree - http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...do?poemId=1689

David Bellos talks about his irreverent survey of translation theory, Is That a Fish in Your Ear? David argues that without translation there would be no world news, no repair manuals for cars and we wouldn't be able to assemble flat-pack furniture. He asks the question how do we ever know that we've grasped what anybody else says - in our own language or in another?

Is That A Fish In Your Ear? - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyTYbHMdvE0

And there's more from The Verb's New Voices, a scheme run between Radio 3 and the Arts Council, supporting emergent talent on the spoken poetry scene. This week we feature poets from Birmingham and their mentors, Sean O'Brien and Aoife Mannix.

Sean O'Brien : Poetry Archive Biography - http://www.poetryarchive.org/poetrya...t.do?poetId=41

Aoifemannix.com - http://aoifemannix.com/

The Verb - Friday, 10pm, Radio 3

Also available for seven days on BBC I-Player

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Janice Galloway is a writer who celebrates the detail of memory. In her introduction to "Anything But Ordinary", she describes how in adolescence a child's all round fascination fades into a concept of wanting more. That "more", she says, is often seen as distant and exotic. She is right of course. Her autobiographical story begins from a local perspective of possibility, a Glasgow art shop, in which an affordable book is purchased. While containing unremarkable imagery which suggests somehow that the world can offer her more, the true highlights of the book are dismissed as uninteresting, even dull. They are, in fact, reproductions of work by Breugel which depict scenes of rural domesticity. Only with the passing of time and more knowledge is Galloway inclined to comprehend their value. Ultimately, she travels to Belgium to see the pictures and finds them rather small. She also discovers scenes in the environment that could almost be Breugel paintings. Her conclusion is that it is often the ordinary that is truly extraordinary. Admitting to having been a quiet child with now, in middle age, a basic need to write, she is convincing in her portrayal of adult perspectives both in her writing and in her interviews.



Janice Galloway

It is no ordinary achievement to become a writer who remains steadfastly true to her background. One wonders if the Verb's New Voices will be so fortunate. While constructive in its objectives, the scheme to which they are signed appears to place emphasis on tailoring to audience. The language that is used to describe that scheme might wrongly imply that it is all about self-improvement. Instead one cannot help but think that it is strictly business. If the principal aim is to be published, any writing will be compromised. I have, therefore, some reservations about young poets being mentored by established writers who have few doubts in themselves. However well-meaning they may be, ambition is not necessarily a friend to art and the successful tend to know most about success. Fatima Al Matar was set deadlines by Aoife Mannix almost as if she were working to middle management. Sean O'Brien's suggestion that he was enabling bilingual Bohdan Piasecki to find his own voice was arguably somewhat shuddering. Other aspects of the modern way were evident, including a penchant for serious gloom. Murder and child abuse might be the preferred subjects of entertainment for some but personally I would always choose Byron and Wordsworth.

Not many decades ago an ability to spell was suddenly declared to be stifling to creativity. Whatever the translation of his essence in "Is That a Fish in Your Ear? - Translation and the Meaning of Everything", David Bellos is a dry academic who is regrettably further along that peculiar road. It is illusory, he says, to view language as simply being words and then, more controversially, that words can even get in the way of conveying meaning in writing. At least, that is what I understand him to be saying, not that I find him wholly comprehensible. With seemingly more anthropological theory than Desmond Morris to support his arguments, Bellos is politically from the same school as Stephen Fry. The common man is urged to believe that baby talk is an underrated method of communication while the author himself earns a living lecturing from on high about words in all their forms and their usage. "It is translation, more than speech itself, which provides incontrovertible evidence of the human capacity to think and communicate thought.” Well, of course, for this is a fanfare to his award-winning abilities at translation while cartoon like clips are provided to the rest of us in somewhat patronising clipped speech.



Mike Scott

So then to the new cd from Mike Scott of the Waterboys, "An Appointment With Mr.Yeats", which sets music to Yeats's poetry. Scott was able to describe in an unaffected way how his mother had lightly introduced him to the writing of WB Yeats. His interest in the poems had started slowly but he has now absorbed them all. He has stayed true to the words and has only altered the order of them slightly where it has seemed appropriate to do so musically. Scott's own writing for the Waterboys has often contained literary references and he has frequently shown in his lyrics a poet's feeling for spirituality. This then is a project that sits so naturally in the canon that it is quite difficult to see the join. The two songs performed on the programme with Katie Kim, "Before the World Was Made" and "Song of Wandering Aengus", were not merely emotionally moving but among the best I've heard this year. There are few current musicians I would rate as highly and he just seems to improve with the passing of years.

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Friday 23 September 2011

The details of this week's programme:

(Not all the links and extracts are discussed in the programme. They are included to provide an introduction to, or reminder of, those featured.)

Ian McMillan presents. On this programme:

Tom McCarthy, critically acclaimed for his novel "C", presents new writing and discusses his work.

C - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ntqb078tpo

Leontia Flynn who is a rising star in the world of poetry. She's been celebrated as an orginal poet and in her new collection Profit and Loss, she examines a fugitive life, including a reaction to the banking crisis of 2008. Leontia reads from the collection and talks about the contemporary poetry scene in her native Northern Ireland.

Drives - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/30/poetry

Ian and writers Alison MacLeod and Tom Rachman discuss the short story's ability to depict the modern day as the Small Wonder short story festival opens at Charleston, Sussex.

The Wave Theory of Angels - http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-en...od-510497.html

The Imperfectionists - http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010...rachman-review

And there's more from The Verb's New Voices, a scheme run between Radio 3 and the Arts Council, supporting emergent talent on the spoken poetry scene. This week The Verb features poets from Norwich.

Writers' Centre Norwich - http://www.writerscentrenorwich.org....ntproject.aspx

The Verb - Friday, 10pm, Radio 3

Also available for seven days on BBC I-Player

[Lateralthinking1]

Oh, I don't know. There were a lot of writers in this edition talking about writing. What is a poem, an essay, a short story, a collection of short stories, a novel? It is fashionable apparently to publish a volume of short stories which interlink or even network. Guest authors Alison MacLeod and Tom Rachman seem like decent enough people. It was reasonably interesting to hear them saying that two of the last three winners of the Pullitzer Prize for Fiction were of that hybrid form. Why now? Yes, notwithstanding historical examples like "The Dubliners", I could believe that this was connected somehow with our modern, fractured, lives. More generally, there appeared to be some agreement that short stories can deal better with the here and now. Unconstrained by the need for elaborate architecture, they are either flux boxes or dynamically fluid. It was also noted that the novel can suffer from having less scope to be oblique. "Tell all the truth but tell it slant", as Emily Dickinson said, although she did so in a poem.

There is a long literary tradition of poetry in Northern Ireland. Leontia Flynn is one of the recent poets from that country who has received excellent reviews. She writes in the popular, pared down style that is frequently presented as the way most writing should be. Tight drafting abilities are all very well but sometimes one hopes for more. In "Reminders" and "The Peace Lily", she satisfactorily described scenes of domesticity. Recently pregnant, and having also moved house, she has developed an interest in changes. Hence the lily is a potted plant that is passed on between friends so that it never really has its own home. "Reminders" ends "'Don't leave key in lock' / reads a note, in capitals, pinned to the back door / above the key, in the lock". Yes, it is deft, there is astute observation, some of the imagery resonates and the light humour is nice. Whether that means that she is "one of the most original and accomplished poets of her generation", I'm not so sure. It probably depends on personal viewpoint. In fairness, she has also tackled global warming and the financial crash so it is not as if she is avoiding the bigger issues.



Leontia Flynn

Staying with poetry, there were two more Verb New Voices. While mentor Ross Sutherland found Deborah "Debris" Stevenson to be a kindred spirit, she wasn't my cup of PG. In the two or three minutes she was given to be on national radio, she managed to get in a reference not only to cannabis but hoodies, gangs and graffiti. There was also the obligatory expletive. The subject of her sestina was the setting light to a pigeon. She contradicted herself on whether this occurrence was imagined or she had actually been somewhere to witness it. Describing herself as dyslexic, her delivery was unexpectedly moving and temperamentally she may well have a talent for drama. As for all of the rest, I'm sorry, but really life is too short and too precious.

So then onto the mentee of "live literature artist" Abigail Conway. John Osborne has a gentle, slightly self-effacing, style - "'Alight here for Blue Valley railway', a man says/I don't know what that means." Conway hasn't read much of his work to date, preferring instead to tutor him in meeting people and talking to them spontaneously. This seems fairly sensible given the nature of his project. In "There's Something About the Railway", his objective is to provide an audio-commentary of a 45 minute train journey from Norwich to Sheringham. There will be a full three quarters of an hour of the sounds of that journey with accompanying observations. Just switch it on as the train leaves the station, try to relax and enjoy. While we were left to wonder a little about the content - presumably it is to be mainly poetry? - it seems to me to be a really wonderful idea and a highly marketable concept.



"C" - Tom McCarthy

Let's get the worst bits about Tom McCarthy out of the way. There is a dark side. He is General Secretary of the International Necronautical Society. That is devoted to mind-bending projects that will do for death what the Surrealists did for sex. Next, he described US soldiers' treatment of Iraqi prisoners as "amazing". He then noted that it gave contemporary relevance to Sade's "120 days of Sodom". However, he did add that while Sade's characters were proud of being criminals, similar acts to theirs are now undertaken in the name of order. About this, he is surely right. There have also been accusations of smugness. The Guardian said: "McCarthy's text has that pleased-with-itself smirk....of the early 90s". Certainly on hearing his piece for "The Verb" entitled "On Dodgem Jockeys", there was gritting of teeth at his self-consciously learned, stylised, precision. However, it was also possible to respect the undoubted substance and sheer brilliance that took his third novel "C" to the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize.

This then is an author whose first book wasn't published because it was too good. It would be churlish not to sympathize. Some of his characters really capture the imagination - the man who received huge compensation because of an accident involving "something falling from the sky” but remained estranged from the world; the father who experimented with wireless communication while running a school for deaf children. As the main focal points of a plot, they would be impressive but frequently they are just the starting points. In "On Dodgem Jockeys", McCarthy wheeled out all his skills. We had a literary reference to Perec, the controls of bureaucrats and manual workers, a bit of time travel and chaos theory, some low level erotica and a multitude of spatial dimensions. At times, it was like a scalpel being taken to an externalised complex but with a breadth of vocabulary to make any remaining hair curl. Add in imagery from nomads to angels and the choreography of ballet - only a brave man would dare to quibble.