Sleeping with the fishes and Mark Doty

I had an encounter of the fish kind, or rather the human kind today. Whilst ruminating over the fish counter at the supermarket I asked the young girl serving how old the mackerel were. Yes I know that sounds 'grumpy old womanish' and it is unlikely that the truth will be told . A good fishmonger would have sold me the story that these mackerel were only landed yesterday and were still hung about with the scent of salty spray. She would have told me they were mackerel that had been no where near the Firth Of Forth, given its recent sewage injection. These were mackerel of unparalleled provenance. The girl stared at the fish and they stared back at her in what I thought was a rather ironic and glazed way , mirroring her own rather bored expression.
'I haven't got a clue I'm afraid, how do you tell the age of a fish." she replied
I was rather tempted to give her a specious lecture on their age being calculated by the number of stripes on their skin, like trees and their rings.Perhaps these were indeed ancient mackerel who had swum with U boats, lost galleons, Viking raiders, bronze age coracles and had survived the ice ages in the warm belly of a prehistoric whale.The mackerel glistened, their upturned mouths looked almost as if they were laughing. These were dead fish with a knowing attitude.

Whilst on holiday in the USA last summer I came a cross a van in the car park of an Eastern seaboard port that had the motto, 'We specialise in cold dead fish'...see the photograph above. This van moved and reappeared at very late and very early hours. I built up a whole back history for this van as a disposal truck for the Soprano type men that hung around the bars near the harbour and in nearby Boston. I never saw any large objects wrapped in polythene and weighted with bricks being dragged from the back of the van at night and dumped onto the deck of some waiting fishing boat but I did hear long shaggy dog stories (or should they be called scaly fish stories) from local fishermen about the severed body parts they sometimes pulled up in their nets , which they said they never reported as it would mean endless good fishing time being wasted talking to the police. I thought these were tales for the tourists,until a local retired coast guard officer regaled me with actual factual accounts of gun smuggling by the IRA in the seventies from the port and the resultant sea body count of those that might know too much and be less than tight lipped. There is something about a dead fish eye that says something more than just dead, maybe what passed before those eyes as they moved through seas and oceans is written onto them.
Best fish poem is a toss up between Elizabeth Bishop and Mark Doty. As I've posted a Bishop poem recently I'm going to plump for Mark Doty's, A Display of Mackerel

I have, as, your far from dead eyes, will note played about with the background colours and text colour and size on the blog. With my professional hat on I know that black text on a pale yellow background affords many, those with sight problems and those with dyslexia, a better reading experience. If a few people tell me they hate it I will ignore them, if many people say they can't get along with it I shall consider changing it back. Don't you just love socialistic tendencies and benevolent dictatorship existing in one body politic...much like the recent French election results.

Kettles and Launching the Craft,

I have neglected posting, mea culpa. I shall try to do better dear reader. I attended the launch of Tamar Yoseloff’s new collection, Fetch, on Wednesday. Does that link turn this into a flog blog I wonder...so spit upon by those that know about the inappropriateness of such things and keep the purity of blogging close to their hearts and mouse.

It was held at Kettles Yard. This was originally a group of old workmen’s cottages in Cambridge that were brought together to form one house by Jim Ede, an ex curator of the Tate Gallery, in the fifties. It has modern gallery space attached and inserted into it now but it still, in parts, has the feel of poking around someone’s house when they are in the bath. In some rooms you expect Ede or his wife to potter round a corner, towel and dressing gown slightly askew, straightening a picture or re-arranging a pile of pebbles, on their way to getting dressed

I find it interesting that books are launched, like ships; with due ceremony they slip into the ocean of other books and for good or ill make their own journey. Of course alcohol is usually involved in both processes and that basic question is always asked, sink or float? Some books and poetry collections are immediate successes, they do more than just float; they become galleons in full sail, grand Cunard Liners or small yachts that circumnavigate the globe to great acclaim. Others are launched like the Titanic to great hoo-hah, enormous expectation and hype and then the iceberg of disappointment or inability to quite match the hype, holes it below the waterline and it sinks or limps on plying the old trade routes of backwater library shelves and second-hand book dealers on Amazon. Some books slip out , almost silently, and can make their way across endless oceans without being noticed, picking up a satisfied passenger here, another there, a good review in the Shipping Times and it becomes more than it was. Of course it was always what it was, or is; what changes is the perception of it.

So we launch books, may the gods bless those who sail in her. Ships are always shes, perhaps a book is too, irrespective of the gender of the author. She’s a fine book, an 'honest craft', as the old shipbuilders on Tyneside and Belfast said of ships they thought worthy of praise.

Craft ( definition)

A profession or activity that requires skill and training, or experience, or specialized knowledge (often used in combination)

Deviousness: skill in trickery or deceiving others

A vessel: a vessel used for travelling, for example a boat, ship, aeroplane, or space vehicle (often used in combination)

There you have three choices all of which could be applied to literature in precise or metaphorical ways.

Shakespeare as Poet in Residence at Aintree,The Grand National and Falling

I have just finished watching the Grand National and noted that over half the field failed to finish. If you want horses and disaster there is of course the poem Serenade by Andrew Motion but I prefer Shakespeare for good horse lines, he knew his horses or perhaps knew how much his patron loved his horses. I suspect that Will would have had a flutter on the Grand National and in the bargain eulogised the courage of Silver Birch, the winner, and would have the jockey say that when he bestrode the horse he soared, he was a hawk. He would probably have had an eye to a commission for a poem from the winning owner as well to celebrate the victory, he was nothing if not street smart when it came to earning a crust.He would not have turned his nose up at a Poet in Residence job at Aintree, although Stratford would have been his nearest course.

Falling takes up the rest of this post's theme. I was asked by someone to contribute to a most embarressing moment in your literary life anthology.Below is what I sent re my fall from poetic grace.

Extreme Poetry

So there I was at this cutting edge visual arts fringe do, a huge factory converted for the space of a few days into chicken wire figures and lurking surreal shapes meets urban industrial ambience and in one room there was the poetry. The place was heaving with the local artistic great and the good and art students vying for the piercing of the month award. Right, I think, fifty something menopausal poet, how’s this going to go down.
I thought for a fleeting second that my leather trousers might at least give me a fighting chance until someone mentioned the WILT (Women In Leather Trousers) phenomena, desperate women of a certain age attempting the not so trendy and failing even that miserably. I followed a techno type band, a couple of boys twiddling knobs and a male middle aged poet who believed that length was the way forward. I’m no shy and retiring sort, being a 6’ 4’’ woman that’s a bit of a pointless exercise anyway, difficult to attempt social camouflage when towering above men’s bald patches.
I took myself up to the microphone with the sort of gait you hope might be interpreted as nonchalant confidence but which no doubt looked as if I’d been drinking heavily. One of the knob twiddling boys was valiantly trying to raise it to an appropriate height. However a screw seemed a bit sticky. Behind me was a small podium on which was a small winged armchair placed there by the organisers in case any of the ageing poets perhaps needed to read sitting down. I decided to eschew the Val Doonican mode of delivery, especially as this would involve more mike stand adjustment and the equipment already looked a tad precarious. I stepped forward, then decided I needed to step back as the volume was set to heavy metal levels. Of course in my eagerness to appear cool, calm and in control, I forgot the podium.
It was, like all accidents, a slow motion moment, something in the brain seems to introduce this strange temporal Bermuda Triangle around you. As I began to fall backwards I considered all the possibilities of recovery but somehow the synaptic pathways to communicate limb movement were running at snail pace. I watched people’s faces as I fell, their changing expressions like a bad bullet deflection moment in The Matrix. I heard a man from the next band on after me yell something like ‘Watch out for mi’ drum kit’, his voice too oddly slowed and distorted into a Barry White impression. Knob boy sprang towards the mike to stop it plunging after me, one has an instinctive drive to grab the nearest thing when gravity takes over. Out of the corner of my eye it was Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, incredibly good wire work with the wire air- brushed out. I seem to recall a couple of friend’s faces with ‘Sh lwys ws ccdnt prn’ text messaged on their foreheads. The Bermuda triangle effect seems to miraculously disappear at the moment of impact and then it’s all a cacophony of voices asking if you’re ok and people struggling to heave you up out of the small space I was wedged into between the podium and the wall. I vaguely recalled the particular dull sound of something internal snapping somewhere below my navel as I fell but being English the pain of embarrassment and potential humiliation was to be avoided at all costs. I shuffled towards the mike, making some lame joke about it being all part of the performance.
I zipped through the reading at a rate of knots, probably sounding like a chipmunk on acid, I did have this voice as a backing in my head saying ‘My that hurts’ or words to that effect but I chose to ignore it, even afterwards when asked whether I was ok I said in a deadpan voice, ‘Well I think I’ve probably broken my leg’ which for some reason made everyone laugh. I drove sixty miles home with only two gear changes, as opposed to my usual four or five, as working the clutch was a bit tricky and the next day had two fractures to my leg and damaged ligaments discovered by the pale, overworked young doctor at A and E.
Sitting in the fracture clinic the following week amidst all the other breaks and cracks, tales were being told about how we had come upon our particular injuries. Skateboarding, roller- blading, karate, horse riding, football, car accident, fall from scaffolding, a bad tempered cow even a bar fight. I was the last to volunteer, ‘So?’ their faces seemed to say as they re-arranged their plastered limbs into more comfortable positions. ‘Extreme poetry reading’ I mumbled into my collected works of Edwin Morgan.

Poetic mooching like a meerkat, with Cab and Betty Boop

I went for a walk in a nearby nature reserve yesterday. Being the fens it consisted of flooded gravel pit lakes, flat vistas and squalls of midges, but still beautiful. Until relatively recently (the 18thCentury) malaria was actually endemic to the fens and many a poor Scottish or Dutch prisoner of war, used to dig the drainage dykes in the 17th Century) are buried in local churchyards or even unmarked at the sides of the bigger dykes. Anyway at least quinine is now no longer required but insect repellent is handy especially as the weather becomes hotter and the midges grow sharper teeth.

I am not a fast walker, I am an ambler, the purpose is not to get from A to B quickly but to mooch in a contemplative sort of way. Mooching seems to have gone out of fashion and I highly advocate its return. Mooching round the lakes I am passed by four sweating runners (one accompanied by knackered spaniel, obviously dying to be allowed to mooch and sniff) and two older ladies with wristband weights who are striding out at one of those power walk paces that almost but not quite breaks into a slow trot. Power walking seems a sure way of ensuring you neither enjoy the walk or the countryside you are passing through, concentrating as you are on the maximum aerobic experience. There were a gaggle of older children on bikes who seemed to have an innate sense of mooching on wheels as nattering and prodding piles of dirt and bushes with sticks is still a popular past time. There were the MP3/I pod walkers whose eyes seemed slightly glazed and turned in as the country passed by to a soundtrack.

Just because I mooch does not imply being unobservant of course or that I have a desultory sensory experience of the countryside. I can be a very tiring vocal observer for any companion, whether I’m walking in an urban or rural environment, rather like a huge overexcited meerkat, ‘What’s that blue flower called, what sort of bird is that, look at that yellow thing, look at that weird drain cover, that shop sign is odd, why does that building have fancy brickwork that looks like two pencils?’ Of course on my own I merely think these sort of things as talking out loud may ensure the power walkers do break into a trot to get away from the mad lady. I once embarrassed friends on my first visit to America by becoming very over excited in a supermarket and insisting on by-passing a rank of expectant and eager check-out girls when I spotted a self-service check-out where you scanned your own purchases (before they were introduced over here). When I was eleven I tripped over a kerb and gashed my knee very badly when I was taken to London for the first time as a treat for passing my eleven plus. What was the cause of my fall? I was desperate to examine a parking meter, as I had never seen one before. These incidents serve to flesh out the meerkat image somewhat.

It would appear that I am drawing up a contradictory picture, mooching and a compulsive need to question and look at things that catch my eye. I looked up the definition of mooching, ’to wander aimlessly from the 14th century French muchier, to hide.’ Well I think I mooch so more things can actually reveal themselves, the old saying of making sure you sniff the flowers along the way springs to mind. My personal definition of mooching would be ‘to wander reflectively whilst maintaining a keen curiosity in the environment you find yourself in.’ Very John Clare (without the madness), very Lakes poets and Wordsworth (without having to involve daffodils and the sister business), very much part of observed poetic behaviour. I think if there was more mooching life could be a little less fraught for some people. If you are a zipper, however, sustained contact with a moocher could result in blown gaskets. Moochers and zippers rarely make good walking companions or life ones probably, although it may be a case of opposites attract and putting a bit of zip into a moocher and vice-versa could be an example of reciprocity and true compromise. I think I am too much of an entrenched moocher to be zipped successfully.

Before anyone tells me, the song ‘Minnie the Moocher’ (see lyrics below) by Cab Calloway was about a different kind of mooching entirely, mainly drug induced. Note coke-y is exactly what you think it is and we aren’t talking soft drink here and kicking the gong was an idiom for using opium. Calloway wrote a Hepster’s Dictionary to let people access the 1930’s jive talk. I just love reading old and new slang, some of it makes you fully understand what a versatile and organic thing language is.
So I guess now this fen queen better wiggly her jelly roll put her sky piece on put the twister to the slammer and trilly to the sound of mitt pounding.

If you have eight minutes to spare take a look at the original Betty Boop, Minnie the Moocher cartoon, a real classic with Calloway’s movements rotoscoped for the dancing of the ghost walrus.

Minnie The Moocher (Lyrics)

Folk's here's the story 'bout Minnie the Moocher
She was a red hot hoochie coocher
She was the roughest, toughest frail
But Minnie had a heart a big as a whale

(hidey-hi's!)

She messed around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him, though he was coke-y
He took her down to Chinatown
And he showed her how to kick that gong around

(hidey-hi's!)

She had a dream about the King of Sweden
He gave her things that she was needin'
He built her a house of gold and steel
A diamond car with platinum wheels

(fast hidey-hi's!)

He gave her his townhouse and racing horses
Each meal she ate was a dozen courses
Had a million dollars in nickels and dimes
And she sat around and counted 'em all a million times

(hidey-hi's, one mo' 'gain!)

Now Min and Smokey they started jaggin'
They got a free ride in a wagon
She gave him money to pay her bail
But he left her flat in the county jail

(ominous sounding hidey-hi's and ho's)

Now Min met Ole Deacon Lowdown
He preached to her that she ought to slow down
But Minnie wiggled her jelly roll
Deacon Lowdown yelled "Lord save my soul!"

(upbeat hidey-hi's)

They took her where they put the crazies
Now poor Min's kickin' up those daisies
You heard my story this is the song
She was just a good gal but they done her wrong
(yet more hidey-hi's)
Poor Min, poor Min, poor Min!