Poetry Magazines - The best collection of poetry magazines online - Simon Armitage

I CAN BEGIN BY DESCRIBING Speracedes, capturing its quiet, its quaintness (for the tourist), or using it to reveal what I like (for like all ‘serious’ writers I must be pretentious without seeming to be) of the Provencal. It’d be a start, certainly, and although others have done It before me, I could perhaps claim to be the only Chinese-speaking-left-side-half of the twin to have done so. Failing that, I could fall back on being the first English-speaking-Montserratean-black. What my eyes see, certainly, must be different. This has its drawbacks. I can’t then mention its sheltered-from-the-winds-in-winter aspect (funny word, aspect) or its magnificent view of the rapidly developing Var valley. Our view of the Var is punctured by villas - over -built, say those who are lucky enough to overlook it. This line of attack leads me into self-contradiction ...

What does the Tunisian see from his nearby tent? Does he see unwelcome houses in the valley? He is a macon - obsessive seven-days-a-week worker (which I found out later, and which made me realise that he wasn’t so much Tunisian as poor). The Tunisian who impersonates this worker is a known imposter. His friends do not live in Grasse. His body does not leak from the gun-styled truncheon of the Man. An Imposter to my way of feeling his reactions (should he be Algerian? Writers are ill-educated people who need cliche to spur them to anger*). He should be Algerian with a ready-made history, eager to make the speech I have written in other contexts (why not to do the thing I have done?); the speech that so many others have delivered better than mine? Perhaps. This drift towards literary reminiscence doesn’t convince me entirely, but It still fails to release me to my story or to the chores of the day. Now the rain has come down; I haven’t yet got to the village for mail, and someone announces that the septic tank has failed. I’ll feign incompetence and watch the rain.
                          * c/f Vietnam, N.Ireland, etc.

The black worms are out in force, and it seems one of nature’s little games that they can’t be put to work (don’t tell me, they’re good for the soil; but the new sewer has to be dug by hand. Mine). Mud being the colour of shit, one develops a fetish for washing. This is a literary lie. The mud, the old clothes, the chores, transform (or confirm) this liar in his role of labourer - far from his building-site, or his master’s farm; that’s why he washes; that’s why he changes. The poems, the stories, the witticisms over dinner, are all aspects of the same lie. I must stop here, before this begins to look like a novice angling for Truth. This is not a time to fake an interest in Philosophy. The rain, of course, dyes the country green; mists rise from the hill-tops. I find this worthy of mention now; they are no longer smeared with mud, with the irritability of someone missing the post, and failing to collate scattered thoughts about the black worms. One must resist the demoralisation that sets in when all the ready-made symbols seem to be revealing their hidden threat and one starts subduing unkind words as élitist/fascist tools (or succumbing to them). I must think about that over lunch. Or perhaps delete it.

Lunch is late because there is no wine. I nearly made a mistake here. I was on the point of describing the process of decanting the wine, when things began to get complicated. Firstly, I was surprised at my own impatience, arriving at the cave to find all the bomboms empty. This meant decanting from a barrel. It wasn’t done to draw off only half the barrel, because although the rest wouldn’t go sour in the few hours before you could complete it, it seemed anti-social to run the risk just to have wine with your lunch. The alternative was to draw off perhaps ten or twelve bomboms (a process that would take an hour and a half) making yourself sick with warm raw wine on the way; and in my case contracting a headache from so much bending-down and hunger. That’s the first reason why I hesitate; I can’t make up my mind whether this is an exciting (quaint) experience or a bloody great bore. The second reason was more technical - perhaps even social or moral? Here was I about to explain the importance of holding back lunch because of the wine: who was I writing for? For the man in St. Vincent who crashed into other people’s lunch ritual with his piece of stale bread -fruit? For those people everywhere who can detect pretension or irrelevance when they see it? I would have to give more thought to that. Lunch passed in a daze as I played unergetically with the idea. I kept waking up, now with a jolt of ‘social awareness’, now to check myself from failing into …..* The morning’s hole is coping adequately. Filling up. Time to go to the village. I am still unsteady going up the rocky path, but gain confidence as I squash black worms all the way to the Post Office.
                                       * compromise?

My depression has nothing to do with lack of mail; very little, really, to do with my having read over these notes. They seemed as inadequate and untrue and (dare I say it?) irrelevant as other things which don’t spur me to protest. On the contrary, it wasn’t the notes which caused me to rethink, it was the lack of - perhaps contact? - lack of something which hides behind the banners of community and empathy that forced me back on these notes, and made me admit that I didn’t recognise the things and places they referred to - even the people. The People I’d forgotten (in the way a selfish man forgets) the people, hadn’t I? It seems from these notes that I was the only one about. Now why would I want to give that impression? Was this the slip of the megalomanic or of the pathetically Insecure? I’ve succeeded in giving the impression that I’m at the centre of things here. How many lines would I rate in another person’ s story about the morning? My first thought was to begin to introduce these people. But how dare I introduce them as an afterthought; they were here at the beginning (unlike colonial peoples, apparently, who come into being the moment their masters ‘discover’ them - like all people, in fact, without their own literary propagandists). The people here smile at me and think I’m writing poems about exotic things. I begin to be responsible. A few random notes on a sheet of paper is making me responsible for people. How did I lead myself into this? What’s the way out? A story of social concern? A story about a man who impersonated me this morning, lunching not here halfway down this expensive mountain overlooking other people’s affluence, but where he really belonged (with the Tunisian? Too neat) on the building-site? Perhaps. But that’s really another story. I think it reassures one to know that there are important stories one might yet write. The Tunisian lives in Grasse (the tent was a gimmick). His girlfriend is a slave to the perfume barons. He protests not at his seven-days-a-week hard labour; not at his girlfriend’s lot in the factory, but that the perfume is synthetically made - in Japan. (Why shouldn’t the synthetic be synthetically made?) Warning. This man is a man of sensibility and Is not wronged. Friends and acquaintances without french-speaking-english-looking girlfriends are wronged and really ‘we must protest for them while stressing our own sensibility. Why labour a point; you know what I mean.

I take the hint and begin to hear voices that were so conspicuously silent all the morning and during lunch. The sun is shining, the woman is smiling, and she insists - absolutely insists - that I come to the pool. I could do my writing there if I liked. Here am I at the pool with my typewriter, my table shaded by an umbrella, my swimming trunks the only concession to the water. The house which goes with the pool is empty this week (the fat from a far land having departed at the weekend) and it is my turn to pollute this expense-account retreat as I wish. Thoughts leap from my head into the ‘billiard-table’ surface until the waves rebel and leap over the sides of this unwillingly domesticated sea. I relent. I calm the waters; I show compassion to all who can abuse me, and the only drowned things are black worms.’ I sit at my table, shaded, shuffling ideas. The woman, upstaging me, places a drink beside the typewriter. Trapped, I type words which no language will claim. It looks good on the camera. The girl smiles; it’s a knowing smile. I register uneasiness at the smile and confront the cameras. Pause. The situation must not sink through solemnity. With the heaviness of a soap-bubble, I discuss pissing into the pool.

     “All the sons-of-bitches do it.”

     (... no, no, no. A mistake. This is a faraway voice, not the voice of the smiling woman...) Again I discuss pissing into the pool.

     “Put it down to the Fascists.”

     “It’s cleaner than theirs.”

     “You won’t be the first.”

     “It’s the least you can do.”

     (not quite; perhaps sometimes, one shouldn’t hear those things which lead one into predictability. So again I discuss pissing into the pool - filtering, filtering responses).

     “There’s a pool in Geneva...”

     (This comes from the girl, and her smile is controlled: she says it in French)

     “... a public pool in Geneva in which the water around you turns blue when you piss in it ...“

     (I suppress several unfunny jokes, turn to the camera with interest, and look knowingly.)

     “… then they come along with a net and fish you out.”

     (filter filter filter: the pool is as safe as a cultivated mind)

     The swim is pleasant; I do not piss in the water - water which a clean man in England is now embezzling his government to pay for.

     The woman’s gone (and the cameras). The sun has gone in (or down). It is chilly. The flies have found me again and the black worms have either multiplied or have crawled out of the water. I am out of paper now and must type on the backs of lies. I haven’t heard the evening news, so do not know where the new war is being fought, but can say in advance, as a writer (can’t I?) that I’m against it. Unless ... The film advert of an hour ago has faded; the olive trees are retreating into the landscape, and I need a sweater. My notes are falling thick as did the surrounding shadows as something, it seems, something new, something real must be uncovered before I allow this day to end. Voices, cries of people threaten to invade the story. There’s a possible hero-victim hanging out of a window in St. Vincent. Sometimes I think he’s already in the story; at other times I try to guess his name, but he will not answer. There’s a man in a basement in South London who is hanging up his pride with his London Transport uniform thinking (knowing) that his story is already written. There is a man sitting here chilly, in the dark beside the swimming-pool, making notes for stories that ought to write themselves - and he is having difficulty. The call to supper is a relief.

The talk at supper was about the storm I had missed, and everyone regretted that it had bypassed us here. I let them savour their regrets, and continued my private reverie. The country at night is impressive; at lunch I had my back to it, facing the house; tonight I look outwards. Even here, the calm after the storm is impressive. I concede the point about the storm. The others find it impressive; they have always lived here, and seen many storms. Yes, the storm is always a winner: how does Nature do it? Nature is, indeed, lucky in its people. They are willing to be surprised by it, entertained by it, and it hasn’t even got to make the lightning green or the rain fall in iambics. It’s good, perhaps, that people are not more naturally formidable (does that make me less threatened?). I conjure up two rival descriptions of the storm - it’s not difficult to describe a storm one hasn’t seen - and wonder which to co-opt as part of my experience of the day. Should I stress its lack of variety (like the song of the bird?) and join the popular debate? Or its opposite? (must, incidentally, re-read that poem of Mr. Keats of T. B. fame).

     And what about pollution?

     Sitting on a porch overlooking a valley on a very dark night, I reject provisional titles for the story (that much would satisfy my (human) vanity for achievement). It has less, perhaps, to do with the night than with the preceding day. Yet the countless lights which perforate the night sending uneasy (and perhaps forced) signals to my head now like Macbeth’s Wood, now like so many controlled fires which at a signal will gradually (or suddenly) spread, must be fitted into some scheme for the day. Perhaps these thoughts do not lead easily back into my story, so I try to find leads which would take me nearer to its heart. Turning my back (like lunchtime) on the night, I re-enter a particular house. After work, say: a drink; a friend. A house inviting cameras from the glossy magazines. Can I ignore that house? I have been invited several times, invited to sample the pool, the architecture, etc.. The woman fits the house, folded up in a chair, white: the drinks; the radio; blues; only a matter of time and I dance. The hostess smiles at me, glows in the fire: does this really lead back into the story - or is it all behind me? Perhaps one should quite simply address one’s self to the night. Concentrate till it rises to your expectations and becomes the centre of your universe. Rings of light encircle it, and in the far distance clusters like people huddling on the periphery. The trick works, releases the imagination; I am no longer pinned down by the obscenities that pass for houses. Lights from chateaux, from corporation flats, from overcrowded huts, from tents, all impress with the magic of a 20th century night. Careful, I’m veering away from my notes. That house, that rejected house, was real; that house with the cat-woman folded up in the chair. I am using the night to conceal what’s really happening. After the dance we sit exhausted with new drinks, black olives, grapes and a growing feeling of possession ... This 20th century night is also part of the day. The blackness of a past age couldn’t conceive it - a thousand oases, each with its several tales. Is it my curse to find similes for this triumph (in abstractions? in human achievement - In that greatest of all popular arts - a suppressed people rising to victory? No, these all smack of the writer straining for significance: he will be crushed by its weight). The rejected house with the cat -woman folded up in the armchair, looking into the fire, is still there; a(nother) steak in the fireplace, and a new guest wondering if the woman (now black?) is out of place …

     The lights are beginning to go out now…

     I can’t see the house behind the trees.

     Everything is black. People are asleep.

     Tomorrow, if there are no new thoughts, I will rearrange what I have. I squash a black worm . . .