Ashes to Ashes


When our resident cartoonist Glen Baxter first showed me this cartoon for the new issue, I felt deeply troubled - as any poet might. Glen always bases his work on what he has seen and heard with his own eyes and ears. He has reassured me on that score several times.

I have been aware that this sort of practice has been going on in the basements of publishing houses in south-eastern England for decades. It usually happens on a Friday afternoon, when the heads of poetry editors are nodding. It is then that a double-agent generally called the 'editorial assistant' moves lightly, and light-fingeredly, through the dreary open-plan office suite, first forging the editor's signature on batches of rejection slips, and then removing the same number of manuscripts from the tottering, mildewy heap in the corner of the room.

When accused of being a party to this pyromania, editorial directors tend to shrug their shoulders and roar back, with a kind of reckless pit-bullishness, of over-production, the failures of the postal system, or anything else that might conveniently spring to mind. Poetry editors, on the other hand, tend to do two things when manuscripts mysteriously disappear in large numbers, never to return. First, they nod their heads in bafflement and then, having quickly glanced towards the teetering pile which usually blocks out all daylight, they experience a tiny spasm of pleasure to see wanton shafts of sunlight gracing the edge of the threadbare grey carpet for the first time in decades...

Yes, I was deeply troubled when Glen importuned me with the truth. Now, having just visited a show at London's Tate Gallery, I am feeling a little easier about the general situation. Susan Hiller is an American artist who has been living in London for much longer than has been good for her. She has, however, been doing something very useful with many of her early paintings. She has reduced them to small heaps of black ash, and then transferred these touching deposits to tiny glass phials, which are currently on display at the Tate Gallery.

This could be an answer for poets whose work has been destroyed by flames, too. In fact, poets might even learn something from the nefarious practices of those so called editorial assistants. When a painting is reduced to ashes, you are left with the precious essence, and perhaps even the aura, of the original object. This tiny heap of ash assumes a kind of talismanic quality. It becomes more valuable than the thing that it might once have been. The many unpublished poets who are habitually sending their manuscripts to unscrupulous publishing houses might profit by her example.

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Anatomising Slothus Poeticus

 

The best moment is perhaps on a chilly Christmas morning at the zoo of the Jardin des Plantes in Paris, as you walk the avenues that Rilke would once have walked. As we sniff the odours of damp vegetation, we recognize that there is life here beyond the near hysterical noise of over-excited children. This is because plants and animals do not yet recognize the sacred space that is Christmas. These animals believe Christmas day to be any other day, so they go about their worldly business in the customary manner, looking, yawning widely, eating, defecating relatively undemonstratively, and also sleeping.

And it is here that we come upon them, small examples of that species we have for so long wanted to observe. They are penned of course into artificial environments, tiny fragments of man-made woodland consisting of a tree or two, some lengths of rope, straw, and a certain amount of undulating ground made from toughened and painted polystyrene - or some such - which is here to simulate wilderness. It is the tiniest and most constricted of artificial wildernesses. They are happy in such a place. They have not noticed that it is not here that they and their kind have customarily lived and moved. They are as happy to be here as anywhere else, we think to ourselves as we stand crowding together on the far side of the dense, floor-to-ceiling meshing - they must not get out - and stare and stare at them in naked wonderment. They hang upside down in the air above our heads, clinging to the limb of a tree, these creatures that we have for so long wanted to see. We thought for a long time that they were extinct - they look perhaps as if they should be extinct - but this is not true. They were simply not kicking up too much of a fuss, and it is for this reason that we have forgotten them.

They are examples of slothus poeticus, the sloth-poet of legend. We marvel at the fact that they hang upside down in this way. Their world is almost always upside down, and this represents such a radical, even fundamental, division between us and them.  They do not want it any other way. This is their normality, their reality. It is the opposite of our world, and yet you would not be aware, not immediately, that there is such a radical division between us. The bald fact is we could not possibly understand them, no matter how hard we tried. From our point of view, their world is inverted. It is an upside-down affair, a little like Leonardo's baffling mirror-writing. And it is precisely for this reason that they could not possibly make sense of our lives. Yet do they seem to care about all this - or even any of it? Not at all.

They are doing what they need to do. They are following the path thrown down by the light that shines from within. That is all there is to be said about it. What are they actually doing though as they hang here? We need to ask that question once again in order to conceal - or perhaps to expose - no small degree of exasperation. To describe them as doing something is altogether ridiculous because they always seem to be just about to be doing something, to be in the throes of an action which has been arrested for reasons known only to themselves. Their worlds are private, entirely locked away from us. They have one leg extended, raised, as if for movement, and yet they do not seem to be going anywhere because if that leg is moving at all, it could not by the wildest stretch of the imagination be said to be moving with any clear purpose in mind of the kind that would be comprehensible to us.

What is more the single eye that we can see - it would be impossible to see both at once - is strangely leaden, as if looking everywhere and nowhere simultaneously. Their look is timeless - but also maddeningly blank and almost inscrutable, as if they are looking at everyone, and everyone but us. What strikes the onlooker most of all though - and it hits him like a brick to the head thrown by some over-agitated soixante-huitard - is the truly extraordinary degree of their inertia. Purpose, surely, requires some speed, some evidence of an intention to get from a to b within a relatively constricted span of time. Such is the way of the world. Only a fool would be unaware of that. These creatures seem to be beyond the reach of foolishness - or perhaps they are foolishness personified. Difficult to say when there is so little genuine communication.

Yes, this is not happening here. It is as if, aeons ago, they began to move and then, quite quickly (or perhaps relatively slowly), they shifted their attentions elsewhere, and so the movement that was begun is indeed still continuing, but to no particular purpose, because it lacks the will to continue. And yet it is continuing, for want of better. And at some point, we idly speculate, they may arrive somewhere in order to do whatever it is that they are purposed to do. If they can be said to have a purpose. But surely, by that time, all that they had expected to find would be long gone, they would be in a different place altogether, barely recognisable to them at all, just as they will be barely recognisable to the world. And so they will be left with nothing but the fruits of their old-time memories and these, surely, will be ever-fading.

This is slothus poeticus then. We can still observe him (there must be few examples of his kind left by now, this sighting took place many years ago, when the children were very young) going about his mysterious business. We want him to be there, attending to his rites, because he is so strange in his small ugliness, and even rather likeable - the children, who are now married and have children of their own, still roll around the floor, laughing, when I mention him. We would not want to be without him. Nor do we know what to do with him, not really. It is for this reason that we are grateful to the municipality of Paris for showing him some compassion and giving him a home.  

One question still puzzles us though. Why, in the eighteenth century when creatures like this were given their Latin tags, was he given the name slothus poeticus? What possible resemblance could there be between this creature and the person of the poet? Poets live in the world. They make their marks. They write books. They bare their souls on public platforms. They win prizes. They move, at speed, in order to do multiple readings at literary festivals. Perhaps the name needs to be changed in order to reflect the changing times. On the other hand, if the creature is now extinct, things could easily be left as they are for old time's sake. 

A throw of the dice might settle things.

*

How the Eistedfodd dealt with the problem of global warming

Unprecedented and near-cyclonic disturbances have disrupted communications across (almost) the entire length of the East Coast of Wales. Venerable pit heads, recently refurbished by substantial Westminster heritage grants, have collapsed in on themselves with heartfelt sighs. Phone masts on rising promontories have snapped in half like babes across some furious local mother's knee. Winds and rains have reached such a pitch that even those bellowing to the utmost from remote roof tops have been incapable of hearing each other. What is to be done?

Fortunately, the local Eistedffod committee has proposed an ingenious solution. As every local Welsh poet is aware, there is a particular medieval verse form (little used these days) known in the Welsh language as an Engleddynnoch. It requires the poet to declaim under unusual conditions. A stick of such and such dimensions is lodged in the anus and, simultaneously, the nose is pinched by a wooden clothes pegs of a kind sold by local travelling communities. The consequence of applying pressure to these two hyper-sensitive areas means that the syllables, when uttered - they are usually extremely short ones -  will be  at a very high pitch, and therefore audible only to dogs.

This is what the Eistedfodd therefore proposes. First of all, the volunteered poet is made ready to deliver the message in the way that we have just described. Secondly, a local hound is released from one of those razor-wire compounds that are to be found in all small, quaint Welsh hamlets. When the Engleddynnoch is uttered, the dog, recognising it for what it is - a cry for help - races over hill and dale to the next village, and, with an almighty leap, bites the waiting Eistedfoff committee member in the neck. Other local poets, alerted from their slumbers, then race back to the spot, neck and neck with the slavering dog, from whence the cry was issued in order to deal with the problem - a roof may have been torn off; a local river may be in spate.

Thanks to a one-off grant from the Welsh Assembly, the Eistedfodd has already purchased substantial doses of anti-rabies serum against the day. 

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SHOULD OLDER POETS BE EASED INTO RETIREMENT?
Once again plans are afoot to force poets, irrespective of gender, to retire at the age of 65. While expressing muted outrage, the Poetry Society of England is said to be 'aware' of the scope of the problem. According to government statistics, between 2001 and the end of last year the number of poets still active at that age increased from 412,000 to 870,000.

One of the difficulties will be how to enforce the new law, which has already passed through the Lower House without dissent. How does one define a 'working poet'? If a poet is quietly musing upon the possibility of a future poem - even if that poet is prevented from writing it by the swift and efficient action of a local group of vigilantes - could he or she not be said to be working, at least to some degree? Or if a banned poet is caught reading a poem-in-progress which is shortly likely to issue from the pen of a younger writer, could that not be considered potentially harmful, and likely to stoke the flames of creativity in the older man?

And then there are yet others who believe that if poets of any age are not allowed to express themselves as they see fit, the country may find itself in the wide-scale grip of poetry rage, when random groups of writers do immeasurable damage to fragile cultural institutions across the country. A spokesman from The Poetry School favours a much more relaxed and humane approach to the whole issue. 'We positively welcome older poets, and we have never operated a default retirement age. Our oldest course member is 64, and provided the poet is wiling to pay the full fees, we would encourage them to go on versifying.'

Surprisingly, the poet's union, POSON, supports the bill. 'If this bill does not pass into law soon, older members of the fraternity will continue to be obliged to do psychologically stressful work which could prove to be potentially dangerous. These figures will only continue to rise as poets live longer, and are unable to cope with rising imaginative pressure situations.'

The government has now agreed to talk to a consortium of doctors. All these specialists are said to be writers of 'utilitarian prose'. 

No hidden difficulties there then.

*

 

 

 

The Zero Platform

Poets who plan to travel from London's King's Cross Station in the coming months will eventually discover that there is a platform reserved exclusively for their use. Why eventually though? When travelling out of a major rail terminus, it is customary to consult the announcements board. Such boards give us the numbers of the platforms from which the trains are expected to depart, and that numbering system habitually runs from 1-10 or so. The larger the station, the more numerous the platforms. All pretty unexceptional, we are sure you will agree.
 
At King's Cross, matters are a little different. The station has the usual numbering system - platforms 1-11 - but, somewhat surprisingly, it also has a platform  quite outside this system. That platform is numbered zero. Yes: 0. You are surprised to find it there. It seems to be living in a world of its own. The very fact of its existence seems to make little sense until you discover - as you surely will if you are a poet who is not habitually house-bound - that it is reserved exclusively for poets. It exists, in short, to cater for their idiosyncratic needs. What exactly do we mean by that? Well, the destinations are entirely unpredictable - they are almost never announced before you step on to the train, and then, at unforeseen moments, an announcer may tell you that the destination has been changed because the driver's 'vision' of the journey's outcome has been recalibrated according to he dictates of his 'inward eye'. If by any chance you board the train by accident and you happen to be a non-poet or a lapsed poet, you must be mindful of etiquette aboard such trains. There are no greetings and no conversations to speak of - very occasionally a bestial grunt or 'pah!' may infect the air. The traveller's eye is habitually downcast, in contact with the notebook which will be lying open, like a helpless victim, before him. When conversations do erupt, quite spontaneously, they are likely to be clipped, brutal and fractious. The speeds of these trains will be irregular. Sometimes they will appear to be bolting into the future; at other points in the journey, the train may idle for hours at a time, seemingly intent on letting the passengers examine small and unkempt tussocks of grass which come crowding up to the window.

You have been warned. 

Copy-Cat Culling of Poets in British Columbia?

According to a source close to the office of Canada's Governor-General, a mass culling of poets took place this past holiday weekend in British Columbia. These killings, which were enacted, quasi-ritualistically, on a plot of waste land between a boarded up, flat-pak Dulcimers R U store and the state's largest branch of Walmart, was said to have been provoked by an earlier, and equally outrageous, act of inhumanity in this very same state, which had taken place just a few days earlier: the culling of more than 100 sled dogs after tour bookings had fallen away in the wake of the Olympics. Once again, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has been called in to investigate at a pace deemed appropriate.

Eyewitnesses at the scene claim that the culling is directly related to the perceived failure of poetry at a national level. Riots broke out in downtown Montreal earlier in the month after the launch of a new anthology of contemporary Canadian verse at the Bloated Behemoth Book Store. That book, it was later discovered by a man who had subjected it to forensic examination, contained shockingly little verse by poets born in Canada. Several hailed from south of the border, and a third is said to have been resident in London (England), earning a meager living as an antiquarian book dealer and 'practising orientalist', for the past several decades. Margaret Atwood was not even represented in the collection, which is said to run to several hundred wearisome pages in length.

The anthology provoked such a collective mood of rage and despair amongst the Canadian literary community that a plan was hatched to torch the offices of the publisher. When the location was discovered to be a far-flung city in one of the bleakest stretches of northern England, a vigilante group from Alaska, tipped off by a loose-knit confederation of Ontario poetasters jocularly known as the Late Empire Loyalists, stepped in to prevent further violence by swiftly culling the poets in question.

Modern Canadian Poets, edited by Evan Jones and Todd Swift, is published by Carcanet Press at the scarcely conceivable price of £18.95

The Rejection Letter: a Prototype 

Dear Raymond,

Next time you write, I would courteously suggest that you attach the finished poem. Words in no particular order, words which resemble bent, rusting nails spilled willy nilly from a battered old tin, are simply not sufficient. These words of yours have to be organized in a very particular order - rather in the way that a road has to travel in a certain direction if the aim of that road is to get to Brighton or Tunbridge Wells within a certain number of hours. Words in a poem need to be efficient. They need to know what they are doing, and why they are being pressed into service now. It is no good staring at them in utter dismay and bewilderment as if they are so many alien beings. They are not alien beings - but they do need to be recognized for what they are, and treated kindly. You need them to feel well about themselves. You must not give them the impression that, in your opinion, an aura of suspicion hangs in the air about them.

You plead in mitigation that you do not know what a poem is, and that even the most able practitioners have been unable to give you a watertight definition. In a sense, this does not matter. As long as a good publisher regards what you may be doing at some unforeseeable date in the future as exquisite poetry, who is to say that he or she should be judged to be wrong? Who would reject an offer of publication on the grounds that he had recently suffered a crisis of confidence about the kind of thing that he had written? You tell me that one poet even responded: if I could tell you such a thing, I would write the best so-called poem of my life. Yes, poets can be facetious in that way because they are not keen to encourage competition. They may feel that there are already enough poets in the world. That is the sad fact of the matter. The general attitude is: there is one poet in this world, and I am he. Well, you have to live with the imperfections of human beings just as you have to live with volcanoes in distant parts and (closer to home perhaps) malfunctioning drains. Bearing grudges is part of being a poet. Some of the best poets in the canon have crafted poems from exquisitely honed malice.

What I must also tell you is that you have no excuse for not knowing what sort of thing a poem purports to be because there are many books of poems available in your local library. May I suggest that you consult an anthology of poems so that you get some idea of poetry's range and ambitions. That will, I feel, give you scope, confidence. You will feel as if you are breathing again when you find a poet whose work appeals to you. At the moment you tell me that you cannot construct a poem from the available words because there are too many of them, and that, frankly, you do not know where to begin. I would suggest that you begin closer to the beginning of the dictionary than the end. You are unlikely to find many words which begin with the letters X or Z in poems.

The other possibility is that you leave poetry to others, and opt for a boundlessly full life instead.

Yours faithfully

The Bow-Wow Shop

                                                Flaming Bardic Torches

More stirrings from the CBLM (Cornish Bardic Liberation Movement). Cornwall's County Council is proposing to axe the grant of £1,350 which has been funding the annual production of poetry pamphlets in the Cornish language. The money will now be spent on nursery care for Truro's thriving Romany community. Last week, the CBLM made its powerful feelings known by torching the Lady Chapel of Truro Cathedral. 'Our society is in a state of trauma,' commented Trögel Tredinnick, spokesperson of the local chapter, to Al Jazeera. 'Once upon a time, substantial anthologies of Cornish verse were as numerous as the grains of sand in the dunes of Porthcothan Bay. Now the language is as little understood as the winter feeding habits of the vole. We intend to administer a few sharp shocks.'  

Why Books are in Love with Salt

Many dead poets have expressed a good deal of satisfaction at the Bodleian Library's current exemplary storage arrangements. (You may remember that a considerable proportion of their stock of mildewy old books is being kept from harm in a disused salt mine.) Jonathan Swift in particular has lived happily in such circumstances for years. Why such happiness though?

Well, salt is a good preservative, as any eighteenth-century sailor would have been quick to remind us as he greedily sucked flesh from the spine of some salted fish. It helps to keep the books in good order, free from corrupting influences. It is also savoursome. What is more, it has the approval of no less an international celebrity than Jesus Christ, who once approvingly described his followers as the salt of the earth. Best of all though is the fact, known to all, that salt is especially sharp on the tongue - and it is precisely for this reason that Swift has been smiling in the dark down there for decades. Salt is exactly his element. If he were alive in that salt mine now, and not merely hovering, ghost-like, and in some state of perplexity, over the writings that have miraculously survived him, he would be writing all the faster and all the more engagingly

The sad truth though is that everything, in due course, will be improved - which means that things will get much worse for this happy, subterranean fraternity. All these books will in the course of time be transferred to cozy, centrally-hearted stacks above ground. Swift will then sit up on his comfortable bed of nails, blinking in the harsh artificial light of the future, and wonder why on earth he has been plunged into conditions of such unadulterated misery.

Still, if he happens to be alive again when that calamity befalls him - and who knows what the future may bring, given the ever onward march of cryogenics? - that too may goad him back into action. There is nothing more quickening and more stimulating than large tablespoonsful of adversity.