Spring Reading Series: Simon Smith

Seats and floor space were at a premium in Eliot SCR on Wednesday evening as the centre’s own Simon Smith launched his new collection, 11781 W. Sunset Boulevard.

Simon Smith reading from 11781 W. Sunset Boulevard

Patricia Debney introduced Smith. ‘He lives, breathes, reads and writes poetry like no one else I have ever known’, she said, and praised his ‘always evolving poems’, each work seeming to ‘start afresh’.

Smith explained how the book, in two distinct parts, contains poems ‘about transport, rather than transfiguration’. A modest claim typical of Smith, though it was apparent as the evening went on that change and movement in these poems was about more than the mechanics of wheels and engines.

The collection’s title, 11781 W. Sunset Boulevard, is the address of the Getty Institute’s Accommodation in LA, which Smith visited in 2011 when his wife was a Getty Scholar. What first appears to be a rather static title for such a restless collection – a place fixed down by numbers, a point on a map – quickly gathers meaning. This address is more than a destination. It becomes the centre point of a frenzy of writing: 17 poems in 10 days, according to Smith. It is a springboard for departure, back into the poems of Kent and London in the second half of the book. And it is here that Smith spent a day with the archives of poet and translator Paul Blackburn, a catalyst for his current work on Blackburn and an experience explored in the breathless poem ‘11/1/11’.

Smith’s reading began with the first poem in the collection, a response, he said, to his hatred of flying. Written on the plane, ‘Ode: Sat Nav Narrative on Flying into LAX’ builds up details like dabs in a pointillist painting. Here are times, speeds and distances, precisely measured: ‘450 m.p.h. of ground speed dip down at / James Bay distance to LA 2513 miles local / time at present position 12.30p.m.’ Against this catalogue of control the poet’s eyes are ‘gritty-tired, / dogged, filled with the hours bursting / the grit full hours’. A curl of hair acts as a bookmark. The earth curves. Thoughts of home are suspended at 38,000 feet, where ‘everything’s made to look smaller’. Still, but hurtling forward: ‘now / is the moment for change & everything shifts forward next’.

And everything did shift forward. Smith gave us poems of the moment, postcards of fleetingly glimpsed places, impressionistic brushes with found text, street signs, song lyrics, news stations. Smith delivered them baldly, lines running together, taking us from the convoys of ‘muscle cars’ and motorcades past Pacific Coast palm trees and onto the plane home, a ‘long haul long hop deep breath’ of experience. ‘All these things really happened’ Smith explained, making the collection ‘almost like a diary’.

When the plane touched down, we were back in home territory, with part two of the book, ‘Gravesend’. Here was Smith’s ‘A Theory for a Materialist Poetics’, a poem detailing ‘experience crammed in as far as the eye can see’. Smith’s South East is a landscape of train stations, sweet wrappers and Paul Weller lyrics: washing on the line, brambles and railway sidings, a barely concealed threat of malice. ‘We don’t stop at Deptford. No one dare.’ ‘This is Dartford. This is Dartford. Heed the warning.’ Between the PVC and ice-cream van jingles, glimpses of Catullus, Dickens, Henry VIII. And through these detailed despatches recording the ‘ring-pull moment of chance’, the voice of the poet: clear, insightful, and always ‘in pin-sharp form’.

Simon signing books; some familiar faces from the Centre for Creative Writing

There were many questions, not least from poets in the audience. From Smith’s answers, a piece of distilled advice to keep in any writer’s pocket: ‘If you think it’s a poem, it’s probably not. If you think it’s not, it probably is.’

11781 W. Sunset Boulevard is published by Shearsman.

Next up, readings from the anthology In Protest: 150 poems for human rights, featuring poets Kate Adams, Alia’ Afif Kawalit, Hubert Moore and Caroline Rooney. Eliot SCR, 6pm, Wednesday 5^th February.

Until then.

Sonia

Simon Smith is a senior lecturer in Creative Writing at Kent. His previous poetry collections are Fifteen Exits (Waterloo Press) and Reverdy Road, Mercury and London Bridge (published by Salt). His forthcoming The Books of Catullus will be published by Carcanet.

Spring Reading Series: Outcrop

The Spring Reading Series began on Wednesday 22^nd January with three poets from the recent anthology Outcrop: Radical Australian Poetry of Land.

So, what was radical about it?

Michael Farrell; David Herd introducing

Michael Farrell set an offbeat tone with his first poem, a continuous rendering of the line ‘baa baa black sheep’. Eyes on the page, he actually appeared to be reading. How many times had he said it? 30? 50? The audience stiffened, the air drew tight. A mischievous glint appeared in the poet’s eye; he looked up for a second. Listeners gave a titter of relief. Then the line again, over and over, beyond discomfort and into hypnosis. 100 times? 400? As the glaze set in there was a sudden shift, a prompt line, and voices in the audience called out answering stanzas.

Suddenly we knew where we were. Sort of.

The sounds of a jazz band tuning up hovered in the room above. Farrell and the readers who followed embraced the challenge; foot-stamping glee club choruses were answered with sonorous lines and heightened voices. Farrell gave us phrases in backwards Latin, Spanish and Italian. The devil emerged on horseback in urban Sydney ‘like Voss’ from the desert. ‘You can’t drink paranoia’, we were assured. The Earth said: ‘let’s get a coffee in that little Italian café we know… the Sistine Chapel.’ Ears caught fire. The glee club showaddywaddied approval.

Next up was Claire Potter, whose organic poems wreathed their way through the room.

Claire Potter

Potter’s stunning lines showed how assonance and alliteration can woo the ears of an audience, and the distant stride piano evaporated. Phrases such as ‘a ribbon of tea coils into my cup’ and ‘a simmering of sound’ hung in the air long after the reading was over. There was flora and fauna, a blending of ‘plant into night, night into plant’. ‘So yes’, Potter declared, in lines from her poem ‘Misreading’: ‘I pushed her flat into the dirt of this difficult country; and it is true that I write as I read – mistaking wreaths for wraiths, spires for spines, girls for orchids.’

Laurie Duggan took the stage next. Now based in Kent, Duggan is a familiar face on the UK poetry circuit. He began with a section of a long poem in the anthology, ‘They Can’t Take That Away From Me’. (Droll eye-roll to Gershwin fans and singing ceiling.) Written in his thirties, reading the poem was, Duggan said, like reading out his teenage diaries. Undaunted, he delivered a litany of interior details: crazed paintings, the green glaze of an overflowing ashtray, frozen figures in old

Laurie Duggan

photographs, broken typewriters. This was a very different landscape, and Duggan gave us every inch of it, a flâneur collating threads of worn upholstery and old magazines. ‘I would like to write poems like Edward Hopper paintings’ he read, ‘but the eye doesn’t work like that’. Duggan followed with a couple of newer poems not in the anthology, one of which name-checked John James at last year’s Veg Box reading.

So, what was radical about it? Australians in the audience had plenty to say. The poets seemed less concerned with radicality, although Farrell pointed out that ‘radical’ is a problematic term. ‘Putting the land first is a difficult thing in a nation that is all about using the land,’ he claimed. And with a timely cymbal crash, the show was over.

Outcrop: Radical Australian Poetry of Land is published by Black Rider Press.

Next in the series, Kent’s own Frank O’Hara: Simon Smith reads from his new poetry collection 11781 W. Sunset Boulevard, published this month by Shearsman. Wednesday 29^th January, 6pm, Eliot SCR.

See you there.

Sonia

Michael Farrell’s books include Open Sesame, published by Giramondo in 2013. He won the prestigious Peter Porter Poetry Prize in 2010. Farrell is currently Visiting Fellow in the Centre for Modern Poetry at the University of Kent.

Claire Potter’s collection Swallow was published by Five Islands Press in October 2010.

Laurie Duggan’s latest book of poetry is The Pursuit of Happiness, published by Shearsman in 2012.

Tuesday Reading Series: Rogers, Coleridge and White/ Zone

Jennifer Hewson from RCW literary agency

Hi there, hope everyone’s been enjoying some time off after the exams or some time inside writing dissertations while everyone else gets to throw frisbees in the sun. But not to worry, for those who also think that frisbees are best left to domestic animals and people who wear visors, the summer is the time where most of the work gets done. And so this will be the belated post for the events on the last week of term, plus some recent news that have come to my attention (but not, as is mostly the case, to my understanding) from poetry-land.

On the last Tuesday reading series event we had Jennifer Hewson from the Rogers, Coleridge and White literary agency. She gave us some advice related to contacting agents and getting people interested in your writing. She underlined the importance of using your contacts, if you have any, to ensure manuscripts get read or at least seriously considered. Then we had some readers too.

Some people find it really hard to hear about this. I mean, most people I’ve met who want to have a career in writing tend to (ironically) consider writing as something other than a normal job. While different people might have varying modes of work, and it is, like any other art, very much down to talent and style and things that you can’t always teach, I actually like the way most of the talks we’ve had this year have de-idealised the whole process. They have repeatedly made us aware that basic things necessary in all jobs (i.e. networking, a good presentation letter, persistence, etc.) are also things you need to have. It dismantles the whole myth of the artiste, the hedonist and bohemian pseudo-intellectuals who never work for anything else other than themselves, or who hold the dismissive belief that what they do is somehow morally superior to other occupations. In this sense, Sherman Alexie was right to call writing ‘manual labour’. Leave that other fancy stuff to Lady Gaga and the Mumford people and their little guitars, all of them devoid of empathy.

Lastly, I have some news on the new Zone magazine. This is a poetry and criticism magazine started in Kent by staff and postgrads and its first issue comes out early September. It will feature poetry by Denise Riley, Simon Smith, David Herd and Natalie Bradbeer to name a few. I will be reminding people of any events linked to the launch for you in here, so you keep visiting in the months to come.

There are people throwing a frisbee outside and they look so happy. There’s no one else in the third-floor quiet study area where I’m at right now. I want to ask them to come and throw it inside the library. I want to participate. Enjoy the summer.

Tuesday Reading Series: Tony Frazer/ ZONE event

Juha reading behind a flower and Simon Smith really into it.

So, Tony Frazer from Shearsman Books came to give a talk at Kent for one of the Tuesday Reading Series which was awesome. He talked about how he set up Shearsman and offered advice to those interested in starting a similar endeavour. Also, Natalie Bradbeer’s poetry reading was great as always.

Apart from that, what really stood out this week was the ZONE event in the veg box café. ZONE is a Kent-based poetry collective and they organised an event that lasted two days called the San Francisco Renaissance. During the day they had conferences and in the evening there were live performances. The one that stood out for me was Juha Virtanen’s. I think he’s crazy. Before he reads he sits down on the pavement alone and smokes in silence. Then when he performs he’s so so loud and so fast. I’m not sure if the papers he carries have any writing on them because I do not believe anyone can read that fast. Plus, if they were all white A4s, then it would confirm my suspicions about him being absolutely crazy. The fire alarm went off during his reading because someone burnt some toast or something, and there were people going into the kitchen and standing on tables and waving their hands to a machine that simply does not understand human gestures. And Juha kept reading and it was amazing. He got so many claps you couldn’t even hear the alarm. But then we had to leave until it was over.

I also very much enjoyed readings by Simon Smith and Tim Atkins, as well as Natalie Bradbeer’s Lorca translations. Find them all and read them.

Next week it’s the last Tuesday Reading Series event before the summer break. There’s a literary agent from RCW coming to give a talk after a few readings by students.

See you there!

Tuesday Creative Writing Series: Open mic

Simon Smith reading some new poems.

Ben Hickman

Scarlett Thomas reading from upcoming novel.

This week, the Tuesday Creative Writing reading series hosted an open mic evening event to end the term. I’ve always thought open mic nights are terrifying, since you’re showing work to people who also write and who might be into something very different to you. It’s also hard to choose what you’re going to read if you write fiction, as the limit was around one or two A4 sides of writing. Of course, this is also a reason to get excited and learn other techniques and about other people and places and so on… But I still Googled around and found that the fear of being caught out as being unworthy of your occupation by your colleagues and friends is called ‘impostor syndrome’. And so we all had some wine first and no one spoke about our collective fear of public exposure (and some students had just been to a departmental lunch, which meant even more wine and even less fear) and so by the time the reading started, volunteering to read seemed like the best idea in the world.

Well, I still didn’t write my name down, but I was glad to have gone and listened to some awesome new work from both students and staff. I particularly enjoyed Simon Smith’s political poems and Ben Hickman’s poem, ‘The Monkey-Rope’. We also had the pleasure to get a preview of Scarlett Thomas’s upcoming work. The latter was filled with hilarious passages about potatoes (really, lots and lots of potatoes) and dieting and relationship problems. Scarlett started by telling us that it was a ‘work in progress’ (a statement which asserts the existence of the above-mentioned fear at all levels of experience) and so everyone felt more comfortable after that. Needless to say, I really can’t wait for her to finish it!

So here are a few photographs of the brave… Have a good Easter break everyone! I’ll be back with more weekly blog posts after the break (or with any Veg Box events during the holidays)! See you soon.

Tuesday Creative Writing Series: Amy Sackville

Since this is the first blog post, I thought it might be a good idea to explain how the Tuesday Night Readings work. The audience starts to gather just before 6pm in the Darwin College. I particularly enjoy the informality with which the readings are handled. Before they start, everyone can grab a drink and talk to fellow students and colleagues. The audience is diverse: from undergrads to PhD students, to senior members of staff. The latter means that it is easy to get into a discussion on all sorts of topics before the readings start. Last week, there was a student talking to another about chaos theory, there was a group discussing Derrida’s Spectres of Marx and another group having a heated argument about the thickness of their raincoats. Then, everyone seated, white wine on one hand and a camera on the other, I saw Amy Sackville come into the room and everyone went quiet.

She read the beginning of her new novel, Orkney. Her writing flows with beautiful and direct images all paced by a very calculated – but never contrived – rhythmic style. William Skidelsky from the Telegraph describes Orkney as “impressive, intense and daring” and I think, judging by its reception, the audience agreed.

After the reading, there was a question and answer round. She explained the importance of the location as the base of the structural and conceptual framework of the novel, the layering work behind it, as well as the connections between technical choices (such as her distinctive approach to speech) to thematic concerns (the on-going play between presences and absences in the novel as a whole). You can get Amy Sackville’s Orkney here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Orkney-Amy-Sackville/dp/1847086640

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