Jazz, music more widely, certainty and uncertainty, the breakages in/of meaning – these are the opening stories of the seemingly perfunctory but expansive poems by Reuben Woolley.

The opening poem & all that jazz presents an emotional attachment to jazz [can there be any other?]

and this along with other music, the ‘flattened fifth’ of the blues in open skies, will be a recurring visit [jazz again in a later poem muted], that is if, as this poem warns perhaps, we hear the meaning of the story accurately in its ‘mongrel words’.

The uncertainties are implied in counting [whole poem] where

but also in the paradoxes in talk of

which seems assured until

A love poem deserts embraces these dualities too, the lay-out on the page a perfect mime,

The shifts and uncertainties get reflected in further paradoxical uses of recurring words, like the positive ‘bend’ of jazz notes in that opening poem, or in last bus / nowhere the elusiveness of

The uncertainties in life/of life are further narrated in the poems chemistry and lifeline where we are all ‘missing something essential’ whether it is a god that ‘is dead’ or the ‘different readings’ of a relationship.

In later poems in the book we are in the same story of shiftings, where in tideless

and in weft

For me, the many poems about music in this collection provide a thread for the celebration and disappointments inherent in every story told about what we want and need to tell. The flattened notes and the bends in playing are both disruption and nuance in our interpretations. I think these poems are steeped in the narrative of the blues, the ‘atoms’ in the ‘blue’ of life – take their dancing as you will.

In the blue violin the slight dissonance of playing, and doing so ‘in crescendo’, is a statement of intent – ‘to be dangerous’ – but in the poem muted, mentioned earlier, playing with intent, and however stylised, there will still always be the broken stories [not written/played, but experienced] as

In these poems, Reuben Wooley is listening out for those missing notes, sometimes catching in what might seem like an improvisation but what are actually precisely structured pieces, or waiting as they continue to elude, as in talks

This is a sharp, distinctive collection of poems, and the book itself is wonderful, a surprise to me as a hardback and superbly printed, and only at £10, available many places, but go to rhysjones@twentytwentyvisionmedia.com to order direct which I recommend for all the good reasons mentioned.

Here, with thanks.

[Image by artist and photographer Nick Dormand]

Here’s my two pence worth on The Royal Wedding. I’d decided I wouldn’t watch any of it on TV [the obvious lefty-leaning reasons: the privilege, the pomp, the profligacy at a time of years of austerity for most, the cost to the State, the PR rebranding of the Royals as an institution of relevance] and I was therefore outside mowing the grass noisily in a protest only my neighbours would hear.

When I came indoors having manicured the lawn in my dissent, it was later than I thought and the TV was on, my wife V viewing the spectacle already well on course in an understandably watchable moment. I headed as intended straight for my computer, but when I sat down, I heard the strident but also musical voice of Bishop Michael Curry who was already in full flow. It was irresistibly intriguing. I went in to watch, and was captured. Not being religious nor, as already stated, keen on that kind of ceremonial event, I was nonetheless drawn to Curry’s powerful invocation of the power of love, and to his civil rights’ touchstones. It was also hilarious, in many ways, to immediately sense but also witness the incongruity of that delivery in the Royal context and all of its otherwise conventional, sedate, reverential, boringly predictable and clichéd expectations.

And to see the look on so many bemused, shocked faces! It was wonderful. You either watched it or you didn’t: if was joyous to observe – the injection of soul into an otherwise traditionally staid event. My personal favourite moment – more comic than moving – was in this line from Curry’s speech [read the whole here], Anybody get here in a car today? An automobile? But you had to hear it live for the comedy to make sense. Curry asked the question and then paused – that pregnant pause waiting for the expected assent, the yeahs or nods or hands up, but when there was no response and just the still air of indifference/uncertainty/unknowing, he clarified to this largely British/UK attendance with that American word automobiles! Brilliant.

And then this was followed by the black gospel Kingdom Choir performing the glorious Stand by Me, resonating with its inherent civil rights meaning and the deep beauty of its melody. With these two moments I was hooked – but at the point of H and M’s vows being taken, I did immediately go to the kitchen to prepare the pizza for V I had concocted the night before: a colourful range of vegetables, yet my inspirational crumbling of sweet potato pakora with its fiery red pepper was, in the end, perhaps accidental/incidental homage to Curry’s reference to fire from the writings of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.

Continuing with my proclivities, I read this morning’s Observer with special interest in its reflections. I enjoyed, as I always do, television correspondent Euan Ferguson on the banalities of much of the TV coverage, as well as that which took a lighter perspective. I was initially convinced by Nosheen Iqbal – and don’t challenge her optimism for its purposefulness – in an article titled Astonishment in the pews as dose of civil rights puts seal on a radical wedding – but I was then more swayed by the sense and questioning of such reverie by Kenan Malik in his piece Meghan Markle can’t make feudal privilege acceptable.

For my part, I found the following in the listing section of Curry’s powerful sermon, able to relate to his calling for love in the world though not seeing it in any Christian or other religious sense. It seems to me we do not need the ceremony and privilege and institutionalised programming of such a call to be better:

the way

imagine like we love
is the way
imagine when love is the
imagining
imagine when neighbourhoods and communities
become the way
imagine unselfish, sacrificial, redemptive
governments and nations
imagine there’s plenty
of good room
imagine a mighty stream and righteousness is
imagining
imagine business and commerce
become history
imagine when we lay down our swords
is love
imagine when to study war is
imagining
imagine our homes and families
shield us all
imagine we actually treat each other
like love
imagine the earth
is the way
imagine this tired old world
is the way

[Originally posted May 2011]

It doesn’t matter at all, but I wanted to make sure I had contemporary as well as 60s/70s albums in my notional top fifty – though I don’t know why I should feel so compelled – and Pearl Jam’s Ten is there, and now this by Ron Sexsmith. However, Ron Sexsmith was released in 1995, technically his second but in reality the first album that made him known as the brilliant singer-songwriter he is, and along with PJ’s 1991 effort I don’t seem to be all that recent in the end. Not that this is the end, but you know what I mean.

Ron Sexsmith is simply beautiful. When I first heard this eponymous album I knew instantly there was genius at work, for me at least, and that is one of those phenomenal aural experiences you have every now and then and never forget. This blog was created to articulate musical awe and has, but it has also been sidetracked here and there, so writing about Sexsmith returns me to address that initial purpose.

Ron Sexsmith has an angelic voice and all of the songs on this album are sublime. If it is appropriate to make a football analogy then this album is Barcelona and I will leave the reference there to avoid an extended metaphor that could ultimately detract from the music. But this album is in the back of the net.

As I read the song-list for his album I can hear each one instantly. That says something about the excellence of the songcraft. Whilst every single one is a Messi goal, extra-special free-kicks are Secret Heart; There’s A Rhythm; Lebanon, Tennessee; Speaking With The Angel [and just writing that title I hear its plaintive, yearning and gorgeous vocal]; Waistin’ Time; Galbraith Street, and There’s A Rhythm.

In the Stadium of Singer-Songwriters this album is a true champion. Aural crowds chant Sexsmith’s name.

Ron Sexsmith now has a body of work that firmly establishes him as one of Canada’s greatest musicians and a singer-songwriter to compete with the best from any nationality. I don’t think any of his other albums can compete with this one – and that is so often the case when such brilliance is crystallised in one remarkable musical moment – but throughout these there are echos of that incipient excellence as well as maturing depths both in musical variety and lyrics which plot a life and career [for example, Long Player Late Bloomer].

I wanted Manchester United to win the Champions League Cup but the majestic football of Barcelona made them the rightful victors and it was a joy and privilege to watch. There is a connection to Ron Sexsmith over and above this playful if unoriginal football analogy: it was soon after the release of his second but significant album that I saw Sexsmith play live in the great city of Manchester. That too was a memorable experience.

Very pleased to have my poem The Imaginary Orchard here today.

From the previous series, though still applicable!

For my personal catharsis, I recently tore a larger hole in the anus pastitis that is Have I Got News for You here, focusing on the first of its current series hosted by a bloated Jeremy Paxman with Ian Hislop as boorishly smug as ever. I haven’t changed that view. I have, however, and am more than content to admit, watched further episodes, and I can say they have been largely tolerable, at best. This naturally depends on the various hosts and guests, these usually supplying the brighter lights within its dimming continuance. I can’t remember actual good jokes, but there have been a few. One of the funniest moments was seeing host Alexander Armstrong buff up his remaining hair like Ian Hislop.

I mention now in the context of watching Frankie Boyle last night with his current series of New World Order. It was, as I expected, hilarious, but it was also satirically sharp as sharks’ teeth, with the kind of insight and knowing HIGNFY can only dream of these days. Yes, Boyle brings to the open discussion his scripted monologues – those that follow the two themed segments and his closing rouser – but Hislop, for example, will bring his prepared and tired ‘jokes’ to slot into a programme focusing on current affairs and thus having easy expectations of those predictable slots – these preparations yawned into his head previously and made more soporific by the waiting for recording.

Is that last bit too strong and personal? Well, it is the nature of the satire upon which both programmes are built. One sturdy, one collapsing…

Moving on. The two themed foci for Boyle’s programme last night were the demise of the Labour Party, and The Royal Wedding. The first is wonderfully illustrative. Where HIGNFY increasingly snipes and carps and takes cheap pot-shots at Labour and Corbyn [and there is a consistency that seems like childish bias], Boyle and his guests Sara Pascoe, Katherine Ryan and Mona Chalabi, including for this segment David Baddiel, dismantled Labour quite ruthlessly – but again hilariously – and this was interesting as those five people [incl. FB] are all left-leaning in their political sensibilities. The strongest and most incisive criticism was of the anti-Semitism perceived to be in the Labour Party and how Corbyn constantly links this to ‘other’ racisms, rather than seeing and dealing with it distinctively, and perhaps clarifying the position more defiantly, Baddiel having a personal view that carried great weight, not that one needs to be Jewish to have this. But it did. And Boyle was as near-the-knuckle in his humour here as is his signature, pulling from the white-knuckle hat of playing with words, jokes on ‘solution’ and ‘Holocaust’.

The other segment on The Royal Wedding was as acerbic and funny and convincing. Here are two of the jokes, the first lightweight but nonetheless amusing, ‘Meghan Markle will become the Duchess of Sussex, that’s got to hurt. You grow up wanting to be a princess and you end up sounding like a pub in Eastbourne’, and the second packing a surer punch, ‘It’s going to be a traditional wedding. Something old, Prince Philip, something new, the royal baby, something borrowed, the wealth of India.’

I freely admit I haven’t watched last night’s HIGNFY with which to make a comparison, especially in a mirroring of the two themes I have focused on here. I will watch at some stage. Whenever. There just isn’t any great urge – but I can’t wait for next Friday and Frankie Boyle.

I liked this place,
large and quiet
and light,
with proper chairs
at a round table
and no music.
We could talk.
The food was
wholesome,
too much to eat
for him, and I
couldn’t drink my
second beer.
We talked of
his travelling:
spreading her ashes
where they had
been together –
so much for a
petite person –
how to dig a
hole in sand
at beaches, not
throw to the wind.
I said I loved
listening to her still
answering the phone,
her recorded message,
but he didn’t know.
I never ring home
he told me,
which made sense,
like later our hearing
nightingales sing.