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URBAN FOX looks at the London poetry scene

TS Eliot Prize Readings 1996

The 1996 TS Eliot Prize readings were held in the unique atmosphere of the Almeida Theatre in downtown Islington on 12 January, 1996 barely cold in its grave. The award is for the best book of poetry of the year. All ten shortlisted poets were invited to read; all either did, or had their work read, in one case disastrously, by surrogates.

The reading is unusual in that the winner of the prize is allegedly unknown at the time. There seemed, however, to be some conflicting views about this. At the beginning, we were assured that the judging was to be done the next day and therefore noone yet knew to whom the prize would be awarded. On the other hand, Des McAleer who read for Seamus Heaney, let it slip that he was glad to have been assured that the winner had already been decided because he would hate to think that his reading might adversely affect the great man’s chances. Urban Fox smells a rat here and thinks that the organisers should get their story right before the event. Although the prize is for the book, not the reading, the fun of trying to out-judge the judges was a little diminished by this. And that out-judging boiled down to a few names only, which didn’t include the ultimate winner, as you will see.

Of the also-rans the least deserving, at least on this reading, was certainly John Fuller (Stones and Fires). He confined himself to one long elegy for a dead professorial colleague. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, and you’d be right; it might have been fine had it been poetry. One member of the audience said it was like a schoolboy composition on grief, and not a very good one at that. Maura Dooley’s efforts in Kissing a Bone, read gutsily by Jo Shapcott, were little better: the contents of mum’s handbag also had the ring of the classroom. Susan Wicks (The Clever Daughter) was quick and perky.

On a higher plain altogether was Ciaran Carson with Opera Et Cetera. No poet in their right mind would choose to have a stammer, but somehow his is now so part of, so beautifully integrated into, his delivery that I, for one, would mourn its passing. His work, possibly due to the long lines he has taken over from OK Williams, sang soft, clear and moving, and as he was first, got the show off to a good start. Christopher Reid (Expanded Universes) was entertaining with his original and dark brand of offbeat comic verse.

But for me the night belonged to one old favourite and two young Turks. Young Turk Nol, Stephen Knight (Dream City Cinema), was one of the more arresting readers of the evening with a witty and ironic brand of urban observation, guaranteed to please Urban Fox. His work was more inventive and original than most of the middle range established poets on display.

Young Turk No2, Alice Oswald (The Thing in the Gap Stone Stile) did her level best to steal the show. Her reading was mesmeric in its power and intensity, perfectly mirroring the formalism of the poems and spellbinding the audience. Adrian Mitchell, whom Urban Fox met in the street two days later, said she was what he thought Emily Dickinson would have been like. Steady on, Ade! But there was grain of truth in what he said. Her unusual reading style is worth hearing again. But these two, for all their freshness in reading, as poets still have flaws: I wince at Oswald’s dragging in of a heron to lend dramatic effect. Are these the most written-about birds in poetry?

Adrian Mitchell (Blue Coffee) by contrast did steal the show with his funny and wry verse. He finished with two serious poems on the death, by accidental heroin poisoning, of his adoptive daughter. The first was a harrowing rant against the messenger telephone; the second, ‘Especially when it Snows’, an elegiac poem of loss and grief. This last one was everything that the Fuller wasn’t: direct, heart-felt and, while intensely personal, involving.

That leaves only the two absentee superstars. Les Murray (Subhuman Redneck Poems) and Seamus Heaney (The Spirit Level). Purely on the poetry, it is difficult to see how the Heaney did not win. It has since gone on to win the The Whitbread. These towering works were given a spirited reading indeed by the anxious Des and the selection showed the man at his craft. The simplicity of the unusual line “My dear brother, you have good stamina” (‘Keeping Going’) is the mark of a master.

On the other hand, the reader of the Les Murray material seemed to have no genuine qualification for the job other than being Australian, and no dubious one other than being an actor. He confessed to never having heard of Murray and never having read any of his poems. He then proceeded, to the discomfort of the whole audience (which was more or less comprised solely of the London poetry scene) to endlessly pronounce subhuman as subhumane - apt but wrong! He had no idea of how to read poetry - I think he was acting an ocker-made-good-in-film. I felt like saying to him that the role is of a poet reading his own work aloud to audience. But somewhere perhaps the demi-gods of compensation were at work, because Murray was awarded the prize the next day after the putative judging.

New Voices at the Festival Hall - 5 December 1996

The South Bank’s promotion of new poetry talent is to be commended. Here is a prestige location willing to endorse new and largely unknown work. The readings, which are held periodically, take place in The Voice Box, upstairs in the Festival Hall and, appropriately enough, next to the National Poetry Library. It is by far the smallest venue in the South Bank complex, but this makes for an intimate and stylish setting. One could not help but feel sorry for the two poets, there being a head to head to clash with Simon Armitage at the nearby-ish Old Operating Theatre. It is difficult to think of another poet more likely to attract away likely audience.

Paul Farley drew the straw that says first (there was debate as to whether this is short one). Farley has already won the Arvon Prize 1995 and been featured in Poetry Review’s New Poets 1996. It is easy to see, or should I say hear, why. His subject matter: wry, male, offbeat, urban observation, is a well ploughed furrow these days. The most striking thing about Farley’s work is the strength and sustained nature of his tone which is unmistakably his. For example, in A Carry-On:

The whole workforce, shagging - each echelon
from the management down. You think you glimpse
tantric shapes in the sodium dark as you pass
but the workforce are long since laid off, sent-home
and are gone, or in bed, alone.

What sets him apart is the quality if his writing. Also in his assured reading he gave the poems the best run for their money possible.

Tracey Herd had recently had her first collection, No Hiding Place, published by Bloodaxe. In contrast to Farley, she was clearly very nervous and reading seemed a strain, It is, one supposes, a hazard of new voice readings generally that some of the poets will have not had time or opportunity to get experienced at reading in high-profile situations. Herd’s work was well worth hearing. What I found most interesting was her treatment of what are unusual themes for a young. modern poet; racehorses, for example. It is difficult for new young poets to get noticed and snapping up unconsidered subject matters is one way.

Ambient poetry

Already, jokes abound. Swordfish steak with your sonnet? Ode ordinaire, madam? The new Poetry Place, open since May, is attracting both support and criticism from Poetry Society members. Reopened in Covent Garden with help of £90,000 odd worth of lottery money, the public face of the Poetry Society has been altered beyond recognition. In place of the old, men’s-clubby atmosphere of the Earl’s Court base, the mildly enquiring member today encounters commerce, Mediterranean cuisine and ambient poetry. The Poetry Cafe, an independent concern, is cool and smooth, smoked glass, Steadman, chi-chi. Poetry itself seems a sweaty, urgent intrusion upon what is, after all, a very nice little earner.

Chris Meade, the society’s director defends the contemporary collusion between art and enterprise. ‘I’m delighted if people come for a meal of seared lamb or whatever it might be, and get interested in poetry as a result. Non-member diners have to pay £10, for which they get to eat their dinner and four issues of Poetry News. This is actually more lucrative for the Society than normal membership.’

Since Poetry Society members currently get little for their money apart from Poetry News and Poetry Review, the new Poetry Place has been regarded with interest, to see if the situation may be about to change.

The basement space is shared between the cafe and the society, being used for diners unless something else is going on. Early readings and open mike evenings held here were shambolic. Demand was huge, the mike didn’t work and the building seems designed for maximum inconvenience. An open stairway funnels the noise of the loquacious and rather posh diners downstairs and the toilets are so situated that said diners must troop through the poetry event on the way to unload the Chardonnay.

Matters are, apparently, improving, however. The open mike ‘Unplugged’ evenings now run once a week and an effective sound system has been installed, the better to contest the din from upstairs. Bizarrely, however, the event has been handed over to the Poetry Cafe to run and so is not a Society event at all. Fronted by John Citizen, a wholly performance poet, it seems to me that an important opportunity to espouse and promote some values about poetry is being squandered.

Poetry that is successful in performance is often flat and unsuccessful on the page, yet London’s resources provide few opportunities today for the rigours of ‘unperformed’ poetry readings. The upstairs room at the Society however, previously used only for workshops, has just been made available for readings, meetings and private events. With seating for up to 50 people, and with more readings than birthday parties, it could provide a bulwark against the tide of performance poetry.

Chris Meade is clear that the new Place raises interesting questions about what a ‘poetry environment’ should consist of and discusses it frankly. The face of the Poetry Society as the face of poetry is a false equation, he says, and he points out that there are huge expectations of the Society: There isn’t a fiction society. Yet people look to us to be all things to all poets. At the moment we’re absolutely flooded with phone calls because libraries all over the country hand out our phone number to anyone with a query about poetry.

‘Actually’, he says, ‘we are here to represent poetry, not poets. We want to develop to provide services and resources for libraries, publishers, artists in residence and teachers, rather than for the poets themselves. That means we have to make choices about what we can and can’t provide.’

In response to the charge that the ambience of the cafe is exclusive, too expensive, too John Wells and Ab Fab, Chris said he didn’t eat there either. However, he pointed out in a democratic spirit that you can now get morning coffee and afternoon tea and a cake for £3.00 and it’s understood that members can sit over a cup of coffee downstairs for as long as they like without being moved on.

Which is true. But if you sit in the basement and order a coffee you are almost certain to be forgotten by the gorgeous waiter. Excuses range from ‘Sorry, it’s so busy’, to ‘Sorry, it’s so quiet’. When they forget you they sometimes give you your coffee and biscuit for nothing, which is nice, but it underlines the fact that there is still a tension between the needs of poets and members and the business of running a chi-chi cafe.

Poetry Society Spring Event

Sophie Hannah and Eleanor Brown gave a reading upstairs at the Poetry Society on 29 January to launch the latest issue of Poetry Review, Beyond the Bell Jar (Winter 1996/97). Sparsely attended by an audience made up of women with a token male, the evening was introduced by Peter Forbes, the Review’s editor, with the same rather incendiary remark about their work which he expressed in the editorial to Beyond the Bell Jar, this time generalised to apply to women poets in general. With the best and least sexist of intentions he opined that ‘the new crop’ of women poets is cornering the market in ‘light verse with an edge’.

Setting aside the rather bizarre idea that poets come in crops, like spots, I am minded just to say, tell that to Alice Oswald. It is wearying to have to say so yet again, but women poets are as differentiated as male poets. Women might be making the shortlists, publishing anthologies and expanding the boundaries of poetry itself, but if men don’t buy the books, attend the readings or rate the poems, we are in danger of developing parallel worlds.

Thus described, and to my mind belittled, Sophie Hannah and Eleanor Brown were left to begin what eventually became a rather tortured evening. Sophie Hannah’s genial reading of her highly intelligent work was heavy on the introductions and, ultimately, on the ear. She read with such leaden, metronomic emphasis upon rhyme that all her lines sounded end-stopped, even when they weren’t. She uses very loud rhyme - Jag/drag/wag/brag, for example - and the cumulative effect was to make the range of her poetry seem undifferentiated. There was little sense of hearing a poet’s progress. Rather, I felt I was hearing the same technique applied to a range of subjects, with varying degrees of success. One or two of her poems came across as clear winners, variously about being a good loser; about being different from Wendy Cope; and about what class did in the holidays.

Although it is easy to see why Sophie Hannah’s work might attract the description ‘light verse’, it is harder to see why anyone should think it an appropriate description of Eleanor Brown’s work, which is technically accomplished and often profound. It is difficult to forgive, however, the bizarrely mannered and affected performance she gave. Perhaps due to nerves, it was painful to witness and actually made me writhe in my seat and stare at the floor.

Both poets took a very informal approach to reading their formal poetry: there was a sense that they were trivialising themselves and their work. Neither is new to reading, and there are some grounds to suppose that if they worked harder on their delivery and adopted a more professional approach, they might accrue some more of the respect their poetry deserves.