Originally posted February, 2014

A world’s disappearing.
Little street,
You were too narrow,
Too much in the shade already.

You had only one dog,
One lone child.
You hid your biggest mirror,
Your undressed lovers.

Someone carted them off
In an open truck.
They were still naked, travelling
On their sofa

Over a darkening plain,
Some unknown Kansas or Nebraska
With a storm brewing.
The woman opening a red umbrella

In the truck. The boy
And the dog running after them,
As if after a rooster
With its head chopped off.

As mentioned previously, there will be a series of re-postings on Omaha and Nebraska, literary and lyrical, the place of my birth. This was originally posted January, 2014:

Omaha

Red barns and red heifers spot the green
grass circles around Omaha—the farmers
haul tanks of cream and wagon loads of cheese.

Shale hogbacks across the river at Council
Bluffs—and shanties hang by an eyelash to
the hill slants back around Omaha.

A span of steel ties up the kin of Iowa and
Nebraska across the yellow, big-hoofed Missouri River.
Omaha, the roughneck, feeds armies,
Eats and swears from a dirty face.
Omaha works to get the world a breakfast.

by Carl Sandburg

Prolific poet and painter Rupert M Loydell’s latest collection is about many things but I think these poems are mostly about journeys, and not simply because this chapbook begins and ends on a train.

The writing is not surprisingly concerned with the literal journeys we take, but more so those in our thinking: about the past, about the present, about change, about what is good or bad or neutral about change, about seeing some or all of this as a sequence of postcards prompted by music, or similar prompted by someone else’s music.

And that is what the poet and painter spends his or her life doing, all the time – journeying, observing, thinking and recording: the latter literally, or holding as a thought for further along the travelling.

Loydell is very often experimental with his writing, and his affinity for found inspiration and crafting into collages of varied or precise patterns [some of that precision here as in parts of the sequence Nine Postcards and in New Grids or Patterns from the other sequence Fifteen Minutes Nowhere] is a trademark, but in this collection I think we find him at his most lyrical, and many times beautifully so.

It is, however, a calm and carefully observed lyricism, as in the opening detail of the first prose-poem One of These Days. That calm is also the prevailing mood of these poems and in the varying shapings, even though their considerations are at times expansive. There are no histrionics in the contemplations; no drama. I think Rupert would see it as not freaking out, and it suits him and this gently intelligent, thoughtful and compelling collection.

I frankly enjoy raving, but in an empathetic mood, review this now with a reserve that I trust does not disguise my considerable liking.

You can buy for £3.60 here [scroll down to find].

I mentioned that Loydell is also a painter and that gives me the very good excuse to advertise the following to which Rupert has donated an art work. I will certainly be taking a wonderful existential punt for an extremely important cause:

Read more here.

Karaoke Krazy

As reported in today’s Guardian, news of secondary schools seeking to hit demanding GCSE performance targets by switching to ‘alternative’ courses and qualifications has caused outrage among many politicians, especially those in Government and responsible for promoting the national academisation policy of its recent White Paper. Education Minister Nick Glib appeared on ITV News this evening and read from the Guardian article what he called ‘one of the newspaper’s more disturbing revelations’:

The DfE said it was looking closely at GCSE-equivalent qualifications such as the European Computer Driving Licence (ECDL), which can be taught in as little as three days but is equivalent in the DfE’s league tables to a two-year GCSE such as history.

Glib went on to explain that one of the qualifications coming under close scrutiny was for a new subject called Political Karaoke which offers students the opportunity to compose and perform a well-known ‘popular’ song melody with an original re-written lyric for examination. These new lyrics must be based on the phenomenon of political parties – especially the Conservatives – standing by its members regardless of how stupid or criminal they have behaved in either or both of their private and public lives.

A spokesperson from the qualification’s Awarding Body, Spincity College London, did not wish to appear live on the ITV programme but did provide a written statement which offered the following:

Students are tasked with choosing a contemporary political figure who they determine has demonstrated poor ethical or legal judgements and/or acts whilst in a position of authority. They then compose a song lyric to a familiar tune about that person’s total lack of integrity when denying any responsibility for their misdemeanours.  As a template and guide, a re-written version of Tammy Wynette’s ‘Stand By Your Man’ is provided for students to use.

We have been able to acquire a copy of the exemplar lyrics presented in the syllabus for this subject:

Stand By the PM Man

Sometimes it’s hard to be a minion
Giving all your trust to the PM man
You’ll have bad times, and he’ll have very good times
Doin’ things offshore you don’t understand
But if you voted for him, you’ll have to trust him
Even though he’s a bugger to understand
And if you support him, oh be blind about him
‘Cause after all he’s the PM man.
Stand by the PM man, give him Daddy’s accounts to cling to
And something porkish to come to
When nights are cold and lonely.
Stand by the PM man, and show the world you trust him
Keep giving all the trust you fucking can.
Stand by the PM man.
Stand by the PM man, and show the world you trust him
Keep giving all the blind faith you can.
Stand by the PM man.

Read the Guardian article here.

Certainties

I was sitting outside reading and initially just delighted that he had written I step to one side to let them pass, but it is so slippery…. rather than the prevalent silliness of slippey [even the BBC….]. When I later went indoors, there was a plain envelope on the floor beneath the letterbox. Inside was a pamphlet-like ‘Dictionary’ – as it said on the cover – but when I opened the slim volume there were mainly blank pages and only one definition which was this: elusive in meaning because changing according to one’s point of view. This confused but did not displease. I was, however, later disappointed that there was a handwritten note, on the final of the few otherwise blank pages, because it was addressed generally rather than personally To whom it may elude. That said, the smiley-face emoticon after this made me lol.

The universal literary question asks whether the story being told is about appearance or reality and in Ian Seed’s collection of prose poems Identity Papers it is of course both. But they don’t ‘elude’ for me or cause any anxiety about fixture because certainties would seem to be the ultimate illusion in our lives. I enjoy the uncertain journeys. These can slip and slide across the varying landscapes too.

Three poem narratives will serve as an immediate example of the shifting terrain under which these poems are precarious: Honoured Guest is unusual but relatively bland [as it should be, by the way]; New Neighbours disturbs in its mention of child abuse, and Documentary is quite beautiful in its story of a man recovering from mental health issues who we read walks on a sea of crushed forest, formed from dead trees over millions of years who then seems in danger, but at the end of the momentary observation shows a smile that radiates confidence.

The book’s cover suggests something has been redacted, but transferring this as a metaphor to the poems’ quick if tenuous reads would be overstating. There are no black obliterations that require being found out – that would suggest there had been those prior certainties; and anyway, the darknesses of many of these narratives, like New Neighbours, have not been covered up. Nor has that in Late which seems like it could be linked to a ‘real’ life story of a mother who has lost a child in a hit-and-run, but Seed’s imaginary involvement in another near tragedy for her, and the tender absurdity of his offer to make amends, take us as readers beyond a literal response to her story to its shadier if still compassionate reflection.

There is much to smile about in the unravelling of unevents as well. The title poem is lightly teasing in a tale of a return to a former place and life, the closing enlightenment more comic than the tragedy it could have been, or would if a Hollywood film.

Like Seed’s Threadbare Fables reviewed here – and included in this volume – these poems toy with our expectations, arousing them. It’s hard to review that without spoiling the ride. Better to drive yourself up the dark alley or to the cliff’s edge. I’ll simply close by presenting one full poem as a taster, not as sinister or surreal or surprising as many, and not because of that word, but because I was a teacher, and I am as certain as I can be that it isn’t about me:

Read more and purchase here.

Eton Tests

Another Eton College King’s Scholarship English examination paper from 2012 makes interesting reading. Compared with yesterday’s 2014 example I posted, this actually offers reading material and questions that could/should engage, though the difference in the reading demands and potential responses seem at quite disproportionate odds for an exam that is apparently meant to set the same standard. Wouldn’t get away with that for national GCSEs…..

I am bound to be amused by the following latter part of the extract given from Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as it would seem to potentially reflect the actual experience of likely candidates for the scholarship! And lest anyone suggest that as a scholarship this is targeted at the less privileged or a broad social background: I suppose it could be, but when the College’s own literature explaining the purpose makes a reference like In most papers of the examination there is a wide range of questions, so that any clever boy has ample opportunity to prove his worth, the language is so steeped in a public school paradigm of that ‘clever boy’ it seems unlikely:

If I was undertaking a response to question 4 [b] I would, as an Eton aspirant, most likely chose the relatively modern Gatsby because the more contemporary and useful godfather figure Cameron isn’t available. I would call my essay Gatsby and His Panama Hat, writing obliquely but dreadfully keenly about the lavish lifestyle I could lead when such a ‘father’ figure guides and teaches me how to make the most of my offshore funds:

No Panama Connection, Yet

Idly searching on a whim to see if there was any connection between Eton College and recent revelations in The Panama Papers [seemed a fruitful punt] I didn’t find anything on this but did come across some of the college’s King’s Scholarship Examination papers and looked at the latest available for 2014.

The following struck me as interesting that a school of such privilege would be offering up the Stephen Spender poem without any hint of irony:

The comprehension questions on the poem were less surprising: rather obvious because that is essentially what they are, but also the one requisite feature-spotting ask.

How much more enlightening if examinees had been asked to summarise their own attitudes on ‘children who were rough’ and to imagine where such would come from in ‘our world’ today. Or set an essay task titled ‘We Are All In This Together’.

Originally posted in April, 2012:

[Kinda hard to make out on this map, but Omaha is on the far right of the State, bordering Iowa and on the Missouri River].

I was listening recently to Counting Crows’ fine song Omaha from their great debut album August and Everything After and it reminded me how one day I want to compile and post all the quips ever mentioned in song about Omaha, the place of my birth, and/or Nebraska. Poetry is another place to look, and I will, but I know of two Carl Sandberg poems referencing Omaha, and this is the better of the two, if not as explicitly about Omaha as the other,

Sunset From Omaha Hotel Window

Into the blue river hills

The red sun runners go
And the long sand changes
And to-day is a goner
And to-day is not worth haggling over.

Here in Omaha
The gloaming is bitter
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.

The long sand changes.
To-day is a goner.
Time knocks in another brass nail.
Another yellow plunger shoots the dark.

Constellations
Wheeling over Omaha
As in Chicago
Or Kenosha.

The long sand is gone
and all the talk is stars.
They circle in a dome over Nebraska.

– Carl Sandberg

I have over recent months been re-posting on this blog writing from another of mine where its focus on poetry, book reviews and similar was not a part of the main purpose which was music reviewing. That left-field source has nearly finished.

Another but more thematic alternative run of posts was about my hometown of Omaha, Nebraska, USA, though I moved away from there around the age of 10, initially to Germany and then a little later to here in England where I eventually stayed. Though leaving at such a young age, it has always surprised me how much the place and period then still seems to have impacted on me, perhaps more as a metaphor for change than memories of that time, though many of the latter as realities are fundamental to who I am today.

So I am going to re-post a selection of these, but ones mainly concerned with literary references to Omaha, most through poetry, but also some song and the like. The entire set of original postings included a wide range from advertising to film references to American football quarterback calls. Really.

This first brief post is from May 2011. It is interesting for me as I subsequently posted another ‘mention’ in 2012 but didn’t start the sustained run of references until 2014:

Omaha mention

One day I’ll compile a list of Omaha mentions in song, film and other. My place of birth. Prompted today by hearing a snippet of Ginsberg on Cerys Matthews’ BBC Radio 6 programme, so here’s an exerpt on the banjo and Nebraska:

…as the western Twang prophesied
thru banjo, when lone cowboy walked the railroad track
past an empty station toward the sun
sinking giant-bulbed orange down the box canyon –
Music strung over his back
and empty handed singing on this planet earth
I’m a lonely Dog, O Mother!
Come, Nebraska, sing & dance with me –
Come lovers of Lincoln and Omaha,
hear my soft voice at last

– Allen Ginsberg, from ‘Wichita Vortex Surta’

To show a film or not to show a film – that is a stupid question

If I am looking in national newspapers for corroboration of my views on or just common sense about educational matters I will naturally go to The Guardian/Observer. I wouldn’t, for example, read The Daily Mail’s opinions on such which would be like seeking advice from Donald Trump on how to make the world a more caring place.

Yesterday’s Observer had two articles directly and indirectly about using film in the classroom which are convincing rebuttals to views expressed by the DfE’s so-called educational expert Tom Bennett about his opposition to teachers showing films. The first in the newspaper was a report on actor Michael Sheen’s observation the films I was shown in school inspired me; the other in the paper’s The New Review was an article about The British Film Institute’s Shakespearean film season.

I’ve commented on Tom Bennett before in this blog. I don’t know if his specific statements on film use in the classroom and other general observations on teaching approaches are genuine, in which case he is a purveyor of pontification, or just mischievous, in which case he is a perpetrator of pettiness. It’s probably the plosive both, an alliterative impact I would teach to students with a caution about overuse but also illustration, as here, of aptness. I would never teach as a SPaG tick-box points scorer, though Bennett would likely view this as worthy. In addition – to make it a theme – I’d have group work or whole class discussion on whether someone like this should be paid public money to disseminate his elaborate but silly metaphors as educational guidance:

Outside of a media course, the only place for a full movie is a film club or similar. Otherwise you’re just lighting cigars with fivers made out of children’s opportunities. Every second counts in a school; many children won’t get a second chance to sound out letters, learn about Vikings, run their tongue around algorithms and formulae and rhyme. For too many kids, school is the big window into another dimension, a cannon that can fire them from here to infinity. So why stuff that cannon with confetti?

Those final two sentences make little sense to me, but that’s how ‘gurus’ sometimes talk.

As a Head of English, I wouldn’t have been happy if members of the department showed films aimlessly to their classes, but I would have been disappointed if they didn’t use them as the purposeful and winning classroom tool they can be. As an English teacher with thirty years of classroom experience, I can’t imagine having not shown films throughout that time to entertain, engage and inform my students.

The Observer article on the British Film Institute is particularly relevant to my argument in favour of the use of film in the classroom. The BFI school resource packs linked to films – ‘popular’ as well as those interpreting texts, most obviously Shakespeare, but also classic and contemporary – provided a wealth of aids to learning. Obvious connections to English as a subject would be in their developing skills of appreciative and critical analysis, as well as the more general explorations of meanings in themes, characterisation, storytelling and so on. Oh yes, and that ‘entertainment’ factor.

But it is the impact of film versions of Shakespeare’s plays that provided me with the most dynamic classroom resource to complement that of the texts themselves. If students and staff could attend theatre performances, or we could have visiting theatre groups with workshops, then we would – and did [more on this in another posting to celebrate my school’s Shakespeare Days, organised by a colleague]. To engage whole classes and year groups – and the majority who couldn’t/didn’t attend theatre trips – then the use of film versions was a necessity. I’m sure this is glaringly obvious, but not, apparently, for Tom Bennett.

I could write at great length to exemplify my practice and experience of using film to assist in the teaching of Shakespeare, but I’ll save that too for another posting. I will, however, refer to just two other examples – telling ones, but a mere fraction of the use of film in that thirty years of my teaching. The first was in teaching Waiting for Godot to GCSE mixed ability groups. I will always be proud of exploring such a complex play with students of a broad ability range, that pride generated by the quality of their engagement and understanding and reflection of this through coursework as well as speaking and listening responses. This couldn’t have been achieved without seeing the play in performance, and doing so with film versions: in this case using film for the practicality of viewing. Whilst always seeking to explore the whole, the specific assignment I would set focused on the ‘story’ of the four gospels presented in the play. A wider contextualising would be for students to explore, as much as they could individually, whether they saw the play as negative or positive. For a more positive outlook and interpretation, they had to understand its humour, and to understand its humour, it had to be seen in performance. Again, this should be glaringly obvious, but not, apparently, for Tom Bennett.

The second is a more ‘film-as-film’ example and one that, because of this, seems most likely to fall into Bennett’s absolute category for banning. It was also a television programme. Used again for GCSE mixed ability groups, this showing of film was for the media coursework assignment of the syllabus I then taught. The film I used was from The X-Files television series, and it was the episode called Home. Showing this was in many ways genuinely risky, and I could only use in year 11. It was risky because it contained elements of quite graphic horror – though I would not call this ‘explicit’, a nuance I accept – and this was framed in an overall gothic if modern setting. I showed this specifically to teach the impact of visual narrative: the opening setting and scene [the hooker] works across precisely edited visual shots – though accompanied by sound effects of rain and thunder and screams – to tell the uncertain story, at this point, of the burial of a body, probably that of a baby.

The focus of the media assignment was in ‘thematic’ terms the understanding and articulation of how the visual shots conveyed meaning and drama. It was more than this in fact, but I won’t develop now. The other focus of the assignment was on ‘writing’ as a precise skill, here plotting exactly the shots and describing these with a critical vocabulary, in this case media/filmic terms. And it worked. It worked because the visual narrative of this film is so immediately dramatic and effective and engaging and therefore an excellent prompt and tool for teaching and learning. It engaged the students. It helped them to understand visual narrative – and in small groups, students devised their own visual narratives using a defined number of still photo shots – and through this develop a confident appreciation as well as ability to articulate this.

Showing Home was risky for other reasons too, but that was, for me, its educational value beyond the ‘media’ focus. This was in tackling and being challenged by the programme’s exposition of the theme of incest. Such a problematic portrayal is set in the film in contrast with the idealised world/town of Home, and the exploration of what is ‘normal’ behaviour is further examined through quite a bit of humour. Stuffing this educational cannon with confetti? Obviously not, but the ‘film’ context made it accessible in a way I think was profoundly purposeful for teaching, but I would stress it would take confidence, and I had that, to control this. It wouldn’t be a lesson idea I could recommend to everyone.