In the late 70s into early 80s I was lucky enough to have two generous publishers/writers encouraging and supporting me as a poet, though I would be overstating to call them mentors. Jim Burns worked with me briefly over a week as a writer in residence when I was studying in Oxford, and thereafter he continued to encourage my writing, including publishing work in his magazine Palantir from 1980 to 1982, the last in Palantir 19 which was my first truly experimental poem The Chair and Quotations – experimental in that I used quotes from Henry Kissinger’s book The White House Years as well as the Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes from 1973. It is a poem about the Viet Nam war.

The other was Howard Sergeant, the editor of Outposts, and though he never published any of my poetry – and he was always honest that what I submitted was never quite what he wanted – his insistence that I continue writing and continue to submit was a significantly positive encouragement at that time. Sergeant did, however, publish a review of mine about Ted Hughes’ then latest poetry collection Moortown, as I recently referenced in my blog posting about Crow. This was in Outposts 125, in the summer of 1980 just before I began my first job teaching in Devon. As I mention in that Crow posting, I still balk a little at the presumption of being critical about Hughes, but having re-read I don’t feel I could, or should, have changed anything I said. I might have perhaps shifted to begin my focus on the positive then move to the more negative observations, but I can still recall how powerfully I felt about the poems I do criticise. I do think this was fueled by the way Hughes focused so much on these in his reading at Swindon which I had recently attended.

Here is the review:

Photo by artist and photographer Nick Dormand

There is the pick-axe head, but no skull,
all pebbles cranial though too small to
tease, and a beachcomber might at first
think it has been carried by the tide over
so many miles, but with that weight this is
dubious, even considering the shifting of
tons and tons up and down that coastline,
especially in recent high waves. It will
have been more menial – and less awful –
a handle the only missing link with its past,
rusted by sea-salt rather than blood stains,
likely left after digging holes for balustrades.

Having said that, who knows what floated
way off shore, shaft in a boat’s dark hull.

Originally posted March, 2012:

Crow Blacker than ever 

When God, disgusted with man,
Turned towards heaven.
And man, disgusted with God,
Turned towards Eve,
Things looked like falling apart.

But Crow.      Crow
Crow nailed them together,
Nailing Heaven and earth together –

So man cried, but with God’s voice.
And God bled, but with man’s blood.

Then heaven and earth creaked at the joint
Which became gangrenous and stank –
A horror beyond redemption.

The agony did not diminish.

Man could not be man nor God God.

The agony

Grew.

Crow

Grinned

Crying: ‘This is my Creation,’

Flying the black flag of himself.

Crow’s Theology

Crow realised God loved him-
Otherwise, he would have dropped dead.
So that was proved.
Crow reclined, marvelling, on his heart-beat.

And he realised that God spoke Crow-
Just existing was His revelation.

But what Loved the stones and spoke stone?
They seemed to exist too.
And what spoke that strange silence
After his clamour of caws faded?

And what loved the shot-pellets
That dribbled from those strung-up mummifying crows?
What spoke the silence of lead?

Crow realised there were two Gods-

One of them much bigger than the other
Loving his enemies
And having all the weapons.

When I posted recently on Enright’s Paradise Illustrated I also referenced Ted Hughes’ Crow, a book that had a huge impact on me at the time I read it, probably around 1975/76, 3 or 4 years after its publication. It’s a publication that produced at the time, and continues today I suspect, the poles of opinion and response. Without exploring these, I will say that I still find its nightmare vision and bludgeoning expression of this as compelling today as when I first read.

Unlike the Enright, there aren’t the ostensibly comic moments to lighten the darkness, though I do think the comic-strip hyperbole exists to reflect the poetic madness of any commentary trying to explain our lives and world, and the other mythologies that have attempted the same.

I studied for a Bachelor of Education degree – English and Education – and in my third year I wrote an extended essay on Crow. Whilst I could improve so much on its expression if I rewrote this today, the depth and intensity of my research and use of supporting reference has long passed me by. That awful seepage! It was a wonderful and impressionable time.

I do vividly recall seeing at that same time Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney reading together in the Newman Rooms at Oxford. It was stunning. Hughes read almost exclusively from Crow and it was a mesmerising experience. I was so powerfully affected I wrote about the experience, but perhaps thankfully I couldn’t find the poem when looking for it today [!], though I do remember prefacing it with a quote from, I think, Anthony Thwaite, referring to Hughes’ Pennine stabs of voice which is an apt description.

I saw Hughes reading again one or two years later in Swindon, this time from his book Moortown [1979]. I was upset and annoyed by the repetitive and what seemed gratuitous references to the fluids and other mess accompanying sheep giving birth. It wasn’t some precious antipathy to such agricultural realism – I had completed three years as a full-time farm worker before studying for my degree, and had just finished two years working part-time on a small farm outside of Oxford where as well as a tractor driver I was a pigman and shepherd: I knew plenty first-hand [excuse pun] about that messiness. Hughes’ graphic but literal descriptions seemed a far cry from the myth-making and originality of Crow, and I wrote a critical review of this book for Howard Sergeant’s Outposts magazine, my one and only review for such a publication, and one that had the arrogance to be critical of Hughes’ poetry. I haven’t changed my judgement of much of the poetry from that book, but I wish I had been asked to review Crow and perhaps comment on what a huge impact Hughes had on my love of his and all poetry. Indeed, from Gaudette [1977] onwards I  collected first editions of everything Hughes published, including a number of pamphlet and special publications. It is a personal treasure.

[NB in current support of this re-posting, I have found the Moortown review and will be posting later; I am also posting the Enright poems below]

D.J. Enright

I’m very pleased to share the announcement of the publication of a chapbook of my sonnets by Maquette Press:

As mentioned in my previous post, delighted to have this poem published today in IT, but it was unfortunate they were unable to retain its original format. It is a cut-up, but the block of text and some line placings are intentional, so here it is as written.

Always delighted to have my poems published, and In the Making [already posted on this blog] now appears on the International Times site and I will copy below as I do love the illustration, presumably an old one found out beyond.

I am also even more delighted to have another poem published there, a cut-up, written about David Bowie which you can see on the site here.

Knowing there is some finesse to follow
I will look her straight in the eyes
and then wave
so she understands
the scent of this innocence:

I wouldn’t want the scars
she blushes
as a handicraft I have tried before
when explaining the brutal act
of cutting.

Pushing through the market square
So many mothers sighing
News had just come over
We had five years left to cry in
News guy wept and told us
Earth was really dying
Cried so much his face was wet
Then I knew he was not lying

I heard telephones, opera house
Favourite melodies
I saw boys, toys
Electric irons and TVs
My brain hurt like a warehouse
It had no room to spare
I had to cram so many things to store
Everything in there

And all the fat, skinny people
And all the tall, short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody people
I never thought I’d need so many people

A girl my age went off her head
Hit some tiny children
If the Black hadn’t pulled her off
I think she would have killed them
A soldier with a broken arm
Fixed his stare to the wheels of a Cadillac
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest
And a queer threw up at the sight of that

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour
Drinking milk shakes cold and long
Smiling and waving and looking so fine
Don’t think you knew you were in this song

It was cold and it rained
So I felt like an actor
And I thought of Ma
And I wanted to get back there
Your face, your race
The way that you talk
I kiss you, you’re beautiful
I want you to walk

We’ve got five years
Stuck on my eyes
Five years
What a surprise
We’ve got five years
My brain hurts a lot
Five years
That’s all we’ve got

And if you ever have to go to school
Remember how they messed up this old fool
Don’t pick fights with the bullies or the cads
‘Cause I’m not much cop at punching other people’s Dads
And if the homework brings you down
Then we’ll throw it on the fire
And take the car downtown

Originally posted in February 2012:

I enjoyed watching Michael Madsen on this year’s Celebrity Big Brother [I’m a big fan – get over it] not that it did him any good, either for his sense of well-being and purpose, or from a viewing public perspective who knew little about his career and judged him entirely on his abrasive behaviour in the house. I guess some would explain that’s the point. I wouldn’t say I’m a massive fan because I haven’t really seen that many of his films. I’ve watched Reservoir Dogs and Donnie Brasco once, but a favourite that Madsen just happens to be in is Mulholland Falls.

I didn’t realise that Madsen wrote poetry. This emerged when the housemates were given the task of writing their own poems with Michael as judge, and when he read his aloud it was clear that this wasn’t a first. To cut to the chase, I ordered a secondhand copy of his collection A Blessing of the Hounds from the States and I have enjoyed reading it. As the fine poet Gerald Locklin states simply on the backcover blurb, Very clear and honest work. Dennis Hopper is more hyperbolic, claiming I like him better than Kerouac.

A nice little surprise was that as I was typing this post and dipping into the book to read a few I noticed for the first time that the book is signed by Madsen. It is addressed to Pablo, but that’s me now.

Madsen is clearly influenced by Hemingway and Kerouac and Bukowski and that simple connective which links these to his American voice capturing day to day reality in the simplest of language and unadorned imagery. Of course, Madsen’s experiences which provide the storylines are far from ordinary, and the name-dropping could seem bloated if it wasn’t so common as to simply be just how it is in his life. Most of the poems are diary entries of his daily observations, very often enlivened by the extraordinary people and places occupying these. Many are recordings of the barking of hounds and what they mean to say.

I said ‘unadorned’ but there is obviously an affectation in the American voice he uses, but that is what makes it poetic, and it is also to do with simple but certain structuring on the page. I’m not going to try and analyse it any further. It’s straightforward and accessible and engaging. Yes, it’s very often macho and brash, but there are sweeter moments – not that there needs to be, but there are – and at times he is inclined to ruminate and gesture seriously. Here’s the last stanza from an early poem in the collection called Paper which is about writing,

I just burned some hairs
off my arm with a cigarette.
Yeah, think about it.
I wonder what Earnest was thinking
when he loaded the gun.