Roadkill on very flat roads and Poetry

Yesterday I was driving through the farthest flung reaches of the fens* as I am wont to do in the course of work. It was glorious, the sun was shining, the wind for once wasn’t bustling in from the Urals in its Dr Zhivago overcoat and the odd cock pheasant was wandering purposefully across the road. Why does a pheasant cross the road? To give himself an adrenalin rush, for the sense of being on the wrong side of the track, the closest he can get to pretending to be a night club transvestite chicken, who knows? Out in the flatlands I have seen enough equally flat wildlife to make a rich deep textural chapbook of residual fur and feathered poems. I have cause to know that a few fen people do not flinch or slow in the face of passing wildlife, but actively speed up. This makes for rich pickings for a poet as we are often drawn to dead wildlife. The image is irresistible, something squashed by the inexorable wheel of mechanised humanity that demands the search for a new way of saying ‘dull-eyed’ or ‘the final tremor of stilled wings’.
Don Patterson in a recent article for Blinking-Eye wrote that, after reading three hundred poems as the judge of a competition, he was strangely drawn towards a poem entitled "To My Dog Benjy, Killed by a Landrover Outside My House" (it carried the footnote: "Benjy was a cocker spaniel"). He did, however he continues, change his mind after a decent night’s sleep. Another poet I know has written a poem in which there is a stanza about a whole group of poets being lured to their death by one dead rabbit during a Ted Hughes Workshop. At readings fellow poets in the audience always laugh heartily, perhaps because it is rather close to the bone or at least the bleached femur of some mangled badger. A flat-packed roadside bunny could be the default setting to which we poets return when all other creative synaptic pathways are blocked. A Norwegian work colleague once told me that she had hit an enormous elk that had wandered onto a night road outside Trondheim. Fortunately she was fine, as was the temporarily stunned elk but the car was damaged beyond repair. When she told me this story I admit to being somewhat envious of Norwegian poets; so much larger wildlife to cross the road, more exciting roadside events to ponder over and totalled Saabs to eulogise.

* For any reader unfamiliar with the geography of the United Kingdom, The fens I am referring to are in East Anglia ( just inside the backside of mainland Britain as you contemplate the map and view it as someone sitting down and clutching a non-existent steering wheel). It is flat here, not given to woodland or sweet thatched cottages clustered around a village green. In fact many fen villages are long and thin as the houses straggle along the old sheep tracks that offer some vestige of solid foundations. The fens produce extraordinary sugar beet, carrots and celery plus men, who if they are from old local families, have evolved to have short legs and long arms, so helpful in the picking of such root crops.Historically it was a wet marshland where the locals caught eels , hunted ducks and generally caught the ague and malaria.Hereward the Wake had great fun leading the poncy French Normans who did not like getting their feet wet into these marshes and losing them, literally. In the seventeenth century some rich capitalist types with connections in all the right places who could get all the right permits (does that sound universally familiar ?)were allowed to keep any land they drained.Much digging of huge dykes ensued, mostly by Scottish prisoners of war and later Dutch prisoners of war which must have pissed them off no end as it was the Dutch engineers who were busy helping afore mentioned capitalists design the drainage system. The locals known as Fen Tigers pulled down the dyke walls and the windmills at night as fast as they could be built during the day but they were fighting a losing battle.Money talks, money gets you land, money permanently alters the total ecology of a significant area of the countryside ( hmmmm again does that sound familiar ). However it could be that the acres of rich black soil stretching out to the horizon and the proliferation of polytunnels, Peculiar and Strict Baptist Chapels in the middle of nowhere and drive-in MacDonalds next to cinemas with ten screens is indeed progress and may be better than eating jellied eels, the need to sleep under a mosquito net whilst taking mind bending anti-malaria products and the killing of ducks (I seem to have come full circle here to slaughtered wildlife)

The Use of the Jubbly in Poetry

An American friend e mailed yesterday to say she has bookmarked this blog and for some reason her toolbar randomly designates small pictorial icons to each site marked, I am a fried egg. I began to mull this over. It is a cliché but nonetheless a useful guideline that all poetry is ultimately about sex and death, in all its various guises. However after just completing a new poem, I have again realised that a great deal of my poetry is about food. A poet friend has pointed out to me that food either directly or as a simile or metaphor seems to slip inexorably into the body of my poetic work. Perhaps I am not contemplating sex and death enough and instead my waking hours are spent sub consciously processing food?
Food is, of course, often used as a metaphor in itself for thoughts on sex and death, not only by poets but by artists. Picture that ancient biblical image of the apple. Maybe Eve did not want the powers of an omnipotent god and knowledge of all things perhaps she just yearned for a tasty crisp snack? She may have grown tired of exotic soft pulp: mango, papaya, pomegranate and the grape perhaps she just wanted a firm crisp Granny Smith or a rosy Braeburn to get her perfect teeth into. The serpent merely had to extol its virtues as a crunchy unyielding fruit and bobs your uncle; he’s crawling on his belly for the next few millennia, women are bringing forth offspring in travail and needing epidurals and those small plastic pots of ersatz cream you can’t open in cafes without being splattered, have been invented. Giving into one innocent snack can be the beginning of the end, as the Weight Watcher Counsellor once told me at the local Recreation Centre.
On reflection I think I wrote more poetry that included food during my Weight Watching Years. ‘We are what we eat’, we write what we dream of eating. However, since then I have also managed to weave; pork pies, sherbet lemons, mayonnaise, beef casserole and dumplings, vanilla pods, roast lamb and frozen peas, to name just a few foods or culinary accompaniments, into very serious poems about sex and death. It may be that the old adage in my case is wrong perhaps all my poems are ultimately sub textually about food disguised in other darker metaphors. Every phallic symbol really is a sausage; every dark bowl of night is chocolate sauce.
I have noticed that a poem only has to mention a Five Boy Chocolate bar, Jubblies or chewing on a liquorice root and the reader of a certain age is easily grounded in childhood nostalgia. It’s an easy trick, it may often be a lazy device but memory like an army often marches on its stomach.
We all have our own iconography of food; say sardines and for me it’s Saturday tea, sardines on toast in front of the TV with my Dad taking down the football scores so he can check his Littlewoods pools coupon. It is my careful and fascinated excavation of their tiny spine from the flesh, the tomato sauce clinging to it like clotted blood. Milk conjures for me the slimy and vomit-inducing feel on the lips of the skin that builds up on untouched hot milk given to me when I had pneumonia. The word chip is mentioned and I see and hear my mother expounding the virtues of the ‘double frying in lard’ technique to me when I am twelve years old whilst the kitchen slowly grows smoky with neglected hot fat.
That’s the joy of using words, especially in poetry; striving for their precision for your purpose whilst at the same time the reader brings to those words their own personal images and meaning. I like that tension, that tugging on the rope of language between the reader and the writer. That could be a metaphor for the umbilical cord; for me its The Lady and The Tramp eating spaghetti (another point yet again to the effect of food and the Disney Empire on my psyche).

NB When searching for an image of a Jubbly the internet offered me a number of images of big breasted women. As a child I recall wrestling with the problem of trying to squeeze out and gain access to my Jubbly so I could suck on it whilst at the same time ensuring it did not shoot out onto the pavement. Meanwhile some sleazy marketing manager was either paying a covert homage to the Blackpool postcard or had fantasies of handling the large firm breasts of a woman. I rest my case about the connection between food and sex in particular.

Psycho Squirrels and the Disney Empire

4/3/07



I note that in the sub heading on my blog there is mention of squirrels, which I ought to clarify. I have a recent history with squirrels or rather one particular American squirrel. Last August I was hiding in a basement in the USA courtesy of an Arts Council Grant in order to try and complete the first draft of THE definite novel. I allowed myself short breaks for oxygen and Vitamin D exposure in the garden of this small but bijoux New England house.

Being English and of a generous disposition I chose to feed the wild life small biscuit crumbs. Again the Disney Empire extended its tentacles deep into my psyche and I was constructing the image of myself as Snow White with assembled woodland fauna gazing dotingly into my eyes. With hindsight I can now see several flaws in that film. The hygiene of a squirrel drying your dinner plate with its arse was never fully grasped by the audience nor was the potentially aggressive nature of these animals explored. Disney obviously wasn’t about to animate the scene of a dwarf trying to pull a rabid squirrel off Snow White’s throat against the back-drop of gingham curtains and freshly picked flowers.
To cut a long story short a cute fluffy-tailed grey squirrel bounced endearingly out from the trees. I threw it a chunk of all American mock Scottish shortbread, which it ate and then it bit me on the foot. It had, it transpired, previously attacked the small white toy poodle next door, inflicting a number of deep penetrating wounds as it rode it around the garden. It had subsequently been staked out by a gun totting octogenarian relative of the poodle owner but agility, cunning and the poor eyesight of the hunter had allowed it to survive. Local cats were not so lucky.
I immediately managed to piggy back on the local fish freezing plant’s wireless internet connection and looked up whether you could catch rabies from a squirrel. What a wonderful thing search engine technology is in extremis.
“Can I catch rabies from a squirrel bite?” I asked and the ether replied with its all knowing but slightly worrying oracular powers
“Have no fear rabies is very rare and you are more likely to get Tularaemia.” I resorted to mouthwash to disinfect the wound and tried to display the pioneer spirit, I was after all English and needed to display a stiff upper lip. Two days later, after the boys in the Road House I frequented at night commented on the size of my swollen foot, I presented myself at the local hospital for the appropriate injections. They did not seem to find squirrel related injuries at all unusual. However, they informed me, they were also used to removing swordfish from the bleeding sides of local fishermen and one cheery doctor said he had treated gunshot wounds to the testicles of a Santa Claus at a well known Boston department store. I paid cash as the thought of winning the Travel Insurance Stupid Accident of the Month Award was too much for me to bear.
I have since been alert to squirrel related incidents and indeed friends have sent me accounts of close encounters of the squirrel kind and I am, like Robbie Coltrane in Cracker, starting to build up a squirrel profile. Warm cuddly and cute on the outside but psychopathic killers underneath; all that ‘come and stroke me fur’ and tiny dextrous almost human hands is mere camouflage. I have no doubt that this American squirrel survived the winter , not by assiduously storing up his nuts but by dining on a fellow squirrel with a nice Chianti and some farfel beans. Come the tourist season, visitors will not be silent like the lambs or embarrassed English writers. When Mr Nutkin gets his teeth stuck into a prime Boston calf or thigh there will probably be much bleating and litigation will ensue and the guns will be out in earnest.


On a serious note I was sadden and shocked to hear of the recent sudden death of the poet Julia Casterton. I had heard her read on a number of occasions, the last time only a couple of weeks before her death. She was in fine form and read with her usual mix of humour, humanity and sensitivity. She had been a caring and encouraging teacher for many years at City Lit in London and she will be a great loss to poetry.

Happy Acceptance Dance and the Power of the 'Sifters'

3/3/07

I heard yesterday that a poetry magazine of some repute wants to publish one of my poems. Such news always merits the brief big woman happy dance around the kitchen. The choreography of this dance is intricate and often inspired by Aretha Franklin’s Respect. It requires careful navigation of a confined space whilst still ensuring a full measure of joy and unbroken crockery. I have eschewed the whoop as this seems rather American, the happy dance is sufficient unto itself.
The novel (note how it has taken on the definite article as a sign of significance over and above the indefinite novel) is out with the agents and of course should they express a definite interest the happy dance will acquire several extra moves and maybe the fridge will be given a bear-hug. When you live on your own appliances sometimes have to play a dual role in your life. I did at one point consider a rejection dance, a slow regal pavane but it would have felt like a bad dying swan moment performed by something the size of an ostrich. I seem to recall something similar in Fantasia and want to avoid any homage to the Disney Empire.
The use of origami to turn the rejection letter into a paper boat has, however, proved therapeutic at times and could be seen as an attempt at creative recycling. The role of admiral of a growing Armada of small boats encourages the Dunkirk spirit, a case of surviving despite the odds. I think this image stems from watching far too many old black and white films starring well spoken but forgettable English actors on wet Sunday afternoons as a child.
Of course when you fail to win or even come close to commended in a poetry competition one doesn’t even have the satisfaction of origami. A date slips by on the calendar without a ‘congratulations we are pleased to tell you that’ letter drifting onto the hall carpet. All that is left to you is to read the winning entries and try and find fault with the winners or wonder at the judges’ choice. I have found comfort in the mystical readers that sift entries to the big competitions. I have created strange lives and back histories for such people.
‘The Sifters’ lurk in the shadows; eat microwave Moussaka whilst reading my poems in front of Midsummer Murders. They are of course at times Salieri to my Mozart, intent on destroying my will to create. Most times I allow sanity to prevail and envisage every well crafted, interesting and exciting poem slipping through their sieve. Now and then ‘The Sifters’ are the dark gate-keepers betwixt me and the discerning judges who if only they had seen my poem would have understood its merits. I met ‘A Sifter’ once but I am sworn to secrecy. I have no doubt that their powers are great and terrible and that those who cross them will be shredded.