Virtulia

I've been enjoying a new experience of late, getting together with friends virtually to watch a film in synch. Rather than being a distraction, the experience has actually created an intense focus on the films we watch and is always followed by an exchange and catch-up which I carry with me into the week to come. 

So far we've traced an international bent. My choice was The White Balloon, a stunning fairy tale-like film set on Iran's new year (which is celebrated at mid-day when sun and moon are in balance). It's a film in which a young girl wants to purchase a goldfish and tries to buy one, surviving the market of snake-charmers and shops in which she is all but invisible, being a girl. It's a wonderful film, and only my second Iranian film after Wadjda. 

The second film we watched was Tampopo ('Dandelion', the name of a widow in search of the perfect ramen recipe), a Japanese foodie-western which again charmed us and had us laughing. I can't believe how warming I've found these films watched with friends from afar. 

It's my contention...

Many thanks to Kim Moore for featuring one of my poems from the Poetry Map - 'It's my contention' - as Sunday Poem on her blog.

The Poetry Map is up and running now, with free downloadable worksheets for teachers and students to use in class. I've written an article on the map for NAWE's Writing in Education magazine.

Check it out here:

I've also got another post up at the Arvon Teachers as Writers site.

(In case you missed my first post for them, it's here).

Centres of Cataclysm

I've  a review of this great anthology at Versopolis.

Read it here.

A Couple of New Poems, a Review, an Article

At Enchanting Verses, guest-edited by Harry Man, I've two poems 'After Daphnis and Chloe' and 'I Lost my Igloo', as well as an extended review of Christopher Logue's War Music complete.

Find them here and here.

I've also a consideration of allusion in art up here at Versopolis.

Poetry Map

A few years ago, I began work on my Poetry Map, four sequences of poems set at the place they were written or set. Now, with the help of Jon Munson II, that has become a reality.

Click on the image below:

Two New Poems

Happy to have a poem in Tiffany Tondut's Asterism anthology - poems inspired by punctuation.

Mine is the square symbol you get when an emoticon in a text message comes back empty. Since it describes a missing character, it's a poem about what's lost and gained in textspeak. It's an interesting anthology featuring Harry Man (#), Abigail Parry and Hannah Lowe among others.

Buy a copy here.

The second poem is 'Janus' from Tears in the Fence, a poem about the dangers of living two lives at once (not least, exhaustion!). Copies can be purchased here.

December 2015 Catch Up

It's been a great six months - passing my driving test means I can now attend meetings of the Fire River Poets! I can't wait to get back in the swing of discussing and workshopping poems.

I've spent the last four weeks in Hawthornden Castle near Edinburgh, where I was a fellow with four other writers. We had snow, and I even managed to spot the deer twice. Ruth Shannon provided the cooking, Hamish Robinson ran an excellent table.



Thanks for the snap, Anke!

I left Somerset with several foot-deep piles of paper, and returned with five thin wallets.

Before that, I was in Greece for a couple of weeks, exploring some sites from the Iliad, and the Mani region. Again, I also enjoyed some great cooking, and swimming, with poet Margaret Eddershaw and Keith Sturgess, who so kindly put us up.



Mistras, near Sparta

Do check out No Landing, the blog of Harry Man and Jennifer Essex's exploration of 
Hurst Castle. I was lucky enough to be stationed there a couple of days, and whipped up a couple of poems. 

I've a couple of placings to mention: 

‘Respite’ was shortlisted for the Live Canon competition, and appears in the 2015 Live Canon Anthology.

‘Putting Away the Birds’ was commended in the Torbay poetry competition. 

Earlier in the year, ‘The Sitting’ was highly commended in the Gladstones Library Mystery Lady competition.

And some publications: 

'After Peter Blake' appears in the beautifully produced Paris Lit Up, 'Classroom' in The North and my translation of 'A Grave Life' - by Ami - in Modern Poetry in Translation. ‘New Year’ appears in Live Canon's New Poems for Christmas.

I was also really pleased to have a poem in Other Countries - Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, edited by Claire Trevien and Gareth Prior, earlier in the year.

For those who can afford £47.99, I’ve 3 poems in the Teaching as a Human Experience anthology from Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

April Catch Up

A terrific Easter break in Portugal with William Yeats, Frances Leviston and Emily Dickinson for company. The library in Rio Maior is named for Ruy Belo, the existentialist poet. I always forget to explore his work until I'm out there.  

Birthday wishes from my brother in St Kilda, Australia.

And an excellent treatment of my poem 'Handicap' by Sofia Buonvino.

Thanks guys!



There's a lot to look forward to in the next few months. In June I'll be walking the Marazion to Coverack legs of the Cornish coastal path as part of Becki Nevin's Wonderlust project - more details here. It's reminiscent of Simon Armitage's Walking Home/Walking Away projects, which I was also lucky enough to take part in, though with a more communal bent and including a variety of different artists. You can help with the crowdfunding here.

My Story Door project in Exeter has wrapped up, with a book launch at Exeter children's library in March. We are nearing completion of the parallel book by students at Ellacombe Academy in Torquay, which promises to be terrific! Can't wait for the launch later this month! I'm also hoping to get another more poetry-themed project off the ground in the summer term. 

A few publications - I've a review of Josh Ekroy's first collection in the new Interpreter's House while Tears in the Fence has a poem inspired by a character in Penelope Shuttle and Peter Redgroves' The Terrors of Dr Treviles.

I'm also glad to have a poem republished in Orange Coast Review by Davi Loren. I first placed a poem there back in the day. I only wish I could make the launch party.



Happy Easter!

February Catch Up

20th January: a warm reception at Devizes school, where I taught the winners of the John Betjeman Poetry Competition for Young People for an afternoon. It was a terrific afternoon, at least from my point of view!




Since moving to Somerset I've been doing a lot of creative writing teaching, with adults in care homes as part of the Making of Me project with the Courtyard, for which I was mentored by John Killick; and for Story Door, a charity which raises literacy in schools through creative writing. So far, we've been to trips to Babbacombe Model Village and Exeter Cathedral, and written acrostics and collage poems. Students in both Ellacombe Academy in Torquay and Wynstream School in Exeter will be publishing (and illustrating) their own books in March, with a launch at the library attended by parents with the accompaniment of cake,

I've had a few poems out in recent journals: 'After Peter Blake' in the beautifully produced Paris Lit Up, 'Classroom' in The North and 'A Grave Life' - by Ami - in Modern Poetry in Translation. I was also really pleased to have a poem in Other Countries - Contemporary Poets Rewiring History, edited by Claire Trevien and Gareth Prior.

A couple of reviews of Boxing the Compass have appeared:

For the reader who revisits poems, and is able to join in their making, there are many pleasures here.  

                                                                                     Jane Routh, Magma 60

Bryden displays a confidence which ensures that this first collection hits the target.

                                                                                      Louise Crossley, The Interpreter’s House 57

A review of Ami's The Desire to Sing after Sunset has appeared in Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.

Lastly, I'll be delivering papers at a couple of conferences this year:

New Generation to Next Genereation in March, where I'll be talking about Glyn Maxwell.

In September, there is the Dreams as Deep As England Ted Hughes conference in Sheffield, at which I'll be discussing Hughes's collaborations with his friend, the painter and potter R.J. Lloyd. The two of them created four collections: What is the Truth, The Cat and the Cuckoo, The Mermaid's Purse and Earth Dances. He kindly allowed me to interview him at his home in Bideford last January, where I was treated to pea and ham soup with a fantastic Italian sherry.

Check Out My WEBSITE - click on the image

I've an article up at CALM, the Campaign Against Living Miserably, which aims to prevent suicide in young males.

Catch Up

Six weeks in a residential summer school and you tend to disappear. Mobile signals are weak inside the perimeter, and internet access restricted. So here's what I've been up to:

A terrific few days at the John Hewitt festival in Armagh, meeting some lovely people including Frances Leviston, Paul Batchelor, Miriam Gamble and Vona Groarke, and the more familiar faces of Paul Maddern and Damian Smyth. Here's a photo of me with Vona Groarke, with whom I read on the last morning, courtesy of Anne-Marie Fyfe who so kindly invited me in the first place:

As well as that, I had a poem highly commended in the Gladstones Library 'Mystery Woman' competition. One day I hope to make it there for a residency.

I'm hoping to make it to Oxford Brookes for a reading on 2nd October for National Poetry Day, and have upcoming readings at the Dylan Thomas Centre in Swansea on 25th September, the Poetry Cafe on 27th October and the Troubadour on 17th November.

Rights pending, I have a poem in Clare Trevien and Gareth Priors' Rewiring History project. Magma's 'Freedom' issue contains a couple of my poems, 'Berliner Dom' and 'Entries.'

I had my first meeting at The Courtyard in Hereford, with whom I have a three year contract treating dementia patients in the South West with poetry. My peers across the country are Richard Scott, Brenda Read-Brown and Diane Hinchliffe. It's a fascinating project, and a wonderful team. I get started in October.
 
Lastly, I've moved into a cottage in Somerset, deleted my Facebook account and set up my study overlooking a view of sheep on a hillside, from where I'm typing this. Dog come Christmas, stars, bikes and country walks to pubs. Lots to look forward to.

Writing blog tour

Thanks to the lovely Jenny Wong for inviting me to answer these questions

What am I writing on?

I’m completing a pamphlet of more recent material which collides different ideas of the foreign and ways we make it manageable, such as by reference to films. There’s a poem in there called ‘Thinking of Blade Runner in the Turkish quarter of Berlin’ for example. I’m also completing a more experimental pamphlet based on the work of three artists: Martin Creed, Michael Frank and Anselm Kiefer. On a separate level, I’m trying to find someone with an understanding of code to help me with a Poetry Map – 78 poems located at different places across the globe. The poems are written, I just need help realizing the project more dynamically. The prototype is here.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

A long time ago I read that you can recognize any great poet from one line taken at random, and that has stayed as a kind of definition of poetry for me. It’s important to be singular. I think I write by omission in some ways, hence my introductions at poetry readings tend to fill in all the necessary information. The downside of such a spare approach is that the reader might be left high and dry. Then again, there’s a pleasure in interpreting things your own way. One thing about Sylvia Plath is that because she left such a manageable body of work, with her poems written almost on a daily basis, after reading her chronologically there comes a point when you can ‘get’ exactly what she means – intuit her intention – no matter how obliquely she writes; or at least feel you can.

How does my writing process work?

I write very quickly and amass a huge amount of drafts, which I then edit and re-edit. I never throw anything away, because I don’t trust myself. Once I have a stack of new work I think it’s time to sort it out and I read through all the different drafts of a poem and see where it is heading, which approach of all the different edits works best, and shape it, often collaging it from different versions, and re-write the thing. I had a poem accepted recently that was begun about two years ago, which is not an uncommon time frame. It isn’t much changed: a few stanzas cut, a few words edited, a few lines in a different order, and it is now in quatrains.

I tend to write a lot when I am away from home, and end up with sequences about Portugal, Wales etc that aren’t particularly shaped (lots of *s) but contain interesting details. I often worry about whether I am a poet or a writer.

I find it a great help to write for competitions and journals – reading my drafts with an eye on a theme helps me see my work freshly. For example, that poem about the painting of the prematurely aged children might be seen to be about war. The deadlines get me digging stuff out and working on it. When I get a rejection I read the work again and can see it in a different light, more uncharitably. This too is useful. Didn’t Ted Hughes say that when a poem of his was completed he felt excluded, shut out from it? When a poem is finished I put it (and all its drafts) away and my pile is that much thinner so I can begin work on the next poem. 

Next up it's the great Pat Winslow and Marisa Sd

Some Upcoming Readings

Saturday 17th May 2.30 - 4.00pm Poets and Players John Rylands Library150 Deansgate, M3 3EH
FREE EVENT Poems read by Fiona Sampson, Nabila Jameel and myself; music by Arian Sadr

Wednesday 4th June Made in Greenwich gallery with Patrick Early. I'll also be performing a few tunes on guitar

Wednesday 18 June Lit Live! Peckham Pelican - readings by Goldsmiths Creative Writing students, alumni and staff, including Richard Scott, May-Lan Tan, Rachel Long, and special guests: poet Martha Sprackland, and spoken word artists Inua Ellams and Jacob Sam La Rose

1st August John Hewitt Festival Market Place Theatre Armagh, with Vona Groark

Shibboleth

I'm currently teaching a student from Donetsk in the Ukraine. Which means that instead of her saying 'I am at a loss which dress to buy' she is coming up with sentences like 'I am at a loss why the Russian Separatists have stolen cars from the local car showroom.' In recent weeks she tells me her mother has been stopped by people asking directions to the square. She also says there are linguistic giveaways which betray the nationality of people claiming to be from the Ukraine.

'In England people never use 'subway' they use 'tube.' In the US people never use 'tube' they use 'subway.' Likewise, some of these militants have been heard using the St Petersburg dialect word for kerb 'porebrik' instead of the Ukrainian 'bordur.'

Video from Kramatorsk




It's all a little like the dog which runs up to its owner in klan costume and exposes his identity.

Here is a robustly applicable poem by Michael Donaghy.


Shibboleth

One didn’t know the name of Tarzan’s monkey

Another couldn’t strip the cellophane

From a GI’s packet of cigarettes.

By such minutiae were the infiltrators detected.

By the second week of battle

We’d become obsessed with trivia.

At a sentry point, at midnight, in the rain,

An ignorance of baseball could be lethal.

The morning of the first snowfall, I was shaving,

Staring into a mirror nailed to a tree,

Intoning the Christian names of the Andrews Sisters.

‘Maxine, Laverne, Patty.'

from Collected Poems

 

Nick Mulvey's Meet Me There 24th April

Great to be a part of this:

A Round Up of Things

I feel duty-bound to promote Nick Mulvey, whose music is sophisticated and has something to say. Here's an acoustic performance of my favourite song of his from last year. I especially love the lyric:

and the very thing that you're afraid of
that leaves you clean but unclear
is the very dirt that you're made of
and that's nothing to fear

though it's one of those songs where every part is your favourite.



(click to follow the link)

I also had the privilege of seeing Carrie Etter launch her third book Imagined Sons at the Yorkshire Grey on Tuesday.



(click on the image to purchase the book)

It's a collection of prose poems and catechisms (a repeated question with different answers) which imagines various meetings with the son she gave up for adoption in her teens. I particularly admire its rigorous form which seems perfectly able to channel the poems while eluding self-pity. It's a fantastic collection, and one which has special meaning for me as I know Carrie very well and was with her when she began writing most of these pieces.

Another recommendation is May-Lan Tan's Things to Make and Break from CB Editions.



(click on the image to purchase the book)

It's a collection that reminds you how great short stories can be (and has already received a rave review from the Guardian). It immediately reminded me of T.C.Boyle's collection After the Plague, the last story of which describes a man who falls in love with a household of women he watches on a 24hr internet channel. The fantasy is more vivid than real life. Eventually he approaches the real house to cross that barrier.

May-Lan is interested in identity, and Kim Novak's pinned-up hair in Vertigo flashed across my vision a couple of times as I read her stories of twins pursuing the same lover, or close friends divided by irrational jealousy after the casual confession of one with a newly-elevated status. Things are made and broken. May-Lan says she enjoys the idea of a book which tells you how to make things, and how to break them. She is also a poet, but these stories will be enough to get on with for now.





SOME UPCOMING POETRY READINGS


I'm looking forward to reading at Goldsmiths with fellow alumni May-Lan Tan, Rosie Rowell and Jeremy Worman,  Wednesday 26th March 5pm RHB 137

I've a couple of new poems up -

Visual Verse

The Lake

Ink Sweat and Tears

and CALM - The Campaign against Living Miserably, which exists to prevent male suicide in the UK.

and I've my first poem forthcoming in North magazine, called 'Classroom.'

I had a good time too at the Shuffle on 23rd February, reading alongside Claire Booker, Malika Booker, Mehmet Izbudek, Michael Scott and Rachel Smith. Thanks to Jill Abram for hosting.





Lastly, here's a recording of a couple of poems from my launch at Keats House:

A couple of forthcoming readings:

The Pat Kavanagh award readings, which includes the fantastic May-Lan Tan and Malika Booker, next Wednesday, Goldsmiths campus, 6.30 in the Ben Pimlott Lecture Theatre. Last year's was a brilliant event.

Next Wednesday at the Ivy House, Peckham from 8 o'clock.



and a return to Brighton to read at Colin Grant's spectacular Speaky Spokey 8pm Friday 24th January. Spice Monkey are catering, so there'll be curry (chicken and vegetarian) as well as performances:

Felstead and Waddel-100 word stories, Gilli Bloodaxe and Foz - poems and sound, Oh Standfast!'s comedy poems and music from Crawley and Ireland. Anyone in the Brighton area do come!

A Couple of Poems Up

... at ShopCurious? where I'm Poet in Residence.





Merry Christmas!

Stunning Syrian poetry and song