Sebastian Barker 1945 - 2014

    I realise I'm a bit behind with this but I heard today that Sebastian Barker passed away recently. He was an ambitious, engaging, anomalous poet as his father had been and  - also like George Barker - never received much recognition for his "services to the Muse". A friend invited him to my book-launch last year but he couldn't come due to the cancer that's now carried him away.

Here's an obit by Clive Wilmer: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/feb/11/sebastian-barker       

Tourettespoetry

   Great to see Jessica Thom in the Evening Standard last Friday:

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/jess-the-tourettes-superhero-who-cant-stop-saying-biscuit-9127701.html?origin=internalSearch

   Last year I read Thom's wonderful Welcome to Biscuit Land: A Year in the Life of Touretteshero (Souvenir Press, 2012), a compelling diary of the experiences of a young woman who not only - difficultly enough - lives with Tourettes Syndrome but also goes out of her way to enlighten and demystify the condition to others, both through her proactive presence in our community and through her website/blog: http://www.touretteshero.com/. Her use of the masked persona Touretteshero is at once a comic debunking of taking herself too seriously and a symbolic representation of the courageous struggle for disability rights which individuals like Jessica are obliged to mount in a Coalition-lead UK where the status of vulnerable adults and children is - due to the pernicious decimation of public funding and disability benefits in the name of a spurious Austerity - steadily worsening.
    Welcome to Biscuit Land is written from a mature and generous perspective that is able to balance the considerable hardship of living with Tourettes against a talent for casting events in a humorous or ironic light. Disquieting episodes of Jessica being verbally abused or misunderstood while out in public (even by the police or London Transport staff) are contrasted with incidents of her being helped or supported by sympathetic strangers, as well as on other occasions by her loyal network of friends and family. 
      Much of the comedy of the book derives from the surreal verbal juxtapositions thrown out by Jessica's tics, only a small proportion of which - contrary to popular fallacy - contain obscenities. (Stephen Fry, in his Introduction, apprises us of the fact that "not more than 10% of Touretters evince coprolalia"). Indeed, as a poet, it's these bizarre, spontaneous utterances of Jessica's that seem most fascinating since many of them could indeed be lines from contemporary poems: 'Paint your bumblebee (with ink made of tortoise spit'); 'Capital letters talk to themselves at night'; 'Take a picture of your mum's best friend wintering in Lebanon, naked in the bath'. They are like Johnson's famous definition of the Metaphysicals' style: "the most heterogenous ideas yoked by violence together", simultaneously imaginative and lexically estranged. As Jessica says, "All these unconnected things get jumbled round and spat out again. They' re often random but they're rarely incoherent."
    What's interesting is the uncontrollable, spontaneous oral aspect of these ejaculations, as though the link between brain and mouth has somehow short-circuited. Fry posits that the role of these outbursts for Touretters is similar to that of sudden swearing for the rest of us (and this is why coprolalia is sometimes encountered): as a kind of safety-valve for anxiety or build-ups of mental stress, an ultimately "analgesic" effect linked to " a region of the brain deeper within the primal emotional wiring of the basal ganglia". 
     Would it be inconceivable to suggest that poetry (often unconscious or involuntary yet compulsive in its inception too) and the verbal tics of Tourettes originate from the same neural impulses within this deeper, non-rational, more primal zone of the brain but whereas the tics have the explosive power to erupt immediately, the language of poems emerge through a much slower and more zigzagging route which includes both left and right hemispheres, emotion and reason in hesitant collaboration? Might what used to be called "inspiration"( in ancient times believed to be a divine afflatus) - ie. the moment when an image or alluring cluster of words which might kickstart a poem "comes to us" apparently from nowhere - derive from a similar synaptic (mis)firing, a discharge of taboo linguistic energies which manage (as Ted Hughes says) "to outwit (one's) own inner police system"?
    You can sample some Tourettespoetry on the website where there is a brilliant section of 'Tics' which you can compare and rate. 'If you count to four backwards you make Time stand still'. Genius.
   

JHW Biblio

  As a follow-up to the interview with John Hartley Williams which I posted last year, here is a complete bibliography of his work in poetry and prose. Look out for a new collection, The Golden Age of Smoking, later this year.


PUBLICATIONS: POETRY & PROSE

Forthcoming: The Golden Age of Smoking, Shoestring Press, 2014

A Dream of Kos, Hans van Eijk at the Bonnefant Press, 2013

Death Comes For The Poets (a satirical novel, with Matthew Sweeney), Muswell Press, London 2012

Assault on the Clouds. Shoestring Press, Nottingham 2012

Pistol Sonnets, (reissue), Salt 2012

Hex Wheels. Hans van Eijk at the Bonnefant Press, 2011

Less of That W Or I'll Z You! Surrealist Editions, Leeds, 2011

A Poetry Inferno. Eyelet Press, Nottingham, 2011

Outpost Theatre. Hans van Eijk at the Bonnefant Press, 2009

Café des Artistes. Jonathan Cape, 2009

The Ship. Salt Publishing, 2007

Blues. Jonathan Cape, 2004.

Teach Yourself Poetry Writing (Third edition, with Matthew Sweeney). Hodder & Stoughton, 2008

North Sea Improvisation, a Fotopoem. Aark Arts, 2003.

Mystery in Spiderville. Jonathan Cape, 2002 (Revised edition: Vintage, 2003).

Spending Time with Walter. Jonathan Cape, 2001.

Canada. Bloodaxe Books, 1997.

Teach Yourself Poetry Writing (with Matthew Sweeney). Hodder, 1996.

Ignoble Sentiments. Arc Press, July 1995.

Double. Bloodaxe Books, 1994.

Cornerless People. Bloodaxe Books, 1990.

Bright River Yonder. Bloodaxe Books, 1987.

Hidden Identities. Chatto & Windus, 1982.

 

BOOK PUBLICATIONS: AS CONTRIBUTOR

Answering Back. Macmillan, 2007

In the Criminal's Cabinet. Nth Position, 2004

A Manifesto: Strong Words. Bloodaxe Books, 2000

Last Words: New Poetry for the New Century. Picador, 1999.

The Firebox. Poetry in Britain and Ireland after 1945. Picador, 1998.

The Long, Pale Corridor, eds. Judy Benson and Agneta Falk. Bloodaxe Books, 1996.

Emergency Kit. Faber and Faber, 1996.

Klaonica: Poems for Bosnia, ed. Ken Smith. The Independent in conjunction with

Bloodaxe Books, 1993.

Poetry With An Edge 2, ed. Neil Astley. Bloodaxe Books, 1993.

The New Poetry, eds. Hulse, Kennedy, Morley. Bloodaxe Books, 1993.

Poetry With An Edge, ed. Neil Astley. Bloodaxe Books, 1988.

 

PUBLICATIONS: AS TRANSLATOR

Censored Poems. Translations of Marin Sorescu. Bloodaxe Books, 2001.

The Scar in the Stone. Contemporary Poems from Bosnia, ed. Chris Agee. Bloodaxe Books, 1998. (Contributing translator)

 

MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS: REVIEWS AND ESSAYS

Numerous reviews, essays and contributions to the following publications:         

Times Literary Supplement, The London Review of Books, The Independent, The Guardian, The London Magazine, Grand Street, Poetry International, Fulcrum, New Writing (Vintage),The Observer, The New Statesman, Poetry Review, The Literary Review, The Edinburgh Review, Poetry Book Society Anthologies, Angel Exhaust, Agenda, Ambit, Poetry London, Thumbscrew, The Rialto, Stand, Staple, Thames Poetry, Foolscap, The Wide Skirt, New Welsh Review, Poetry Wales, Ramraid Extraordinaire, Dog, Upstart!, The Devil, Staple, Sunk Island Review, P.N.Review, HQ Quarterly, The Wolf, The Warwick Review, Boomerang - also internet publications such as Poetry Daily (US), www.nthposition.com, The Bow Wow Shop etc

 

HONOURS AND PRIZES

2004                TS Eliot Prize finalist (for Blues)

2004                Poetry Book Society Recommendation (for Blues)

1999                Keats-Shelley Memorial Prize

1997                TS Eliot Prize finalist (for Canada)

1997                Poetry Book Society Choice (for Canada)

1987                Poetry Book Society Recommendation (for Bright River Yonder)

1983                First Prize, Arvon Foundation Poetry Competition

Memories of John Heath-Stubbs

   An entry from my journal, dated 19^th March 2001: ‘First meeting with John Heath-Stubbs. I entered the tiny flat – dark, shabby, with singed wallpaper – feeling diffident and over-awed. Extraordinary head looming out of the shadows, silver hair on end, cavernous cheeks. He greets us, a little distantly. Then the bulky frame hunches over, head in enormous hands as Guthrie goes through appointments, times, dates with him like a solicitous mother with a teenage son. He answers in bewildered tones – has forgotten to do this, can’t remember what time he’s supposed to do that, has lost such and such an address.’

    ‘I thought he was in bad spirits and felt dreadfully de trop, but it was obviously just the practicalities dismaying him– as the others got up to go he said (obviously having heard I was interested in poetry) “Wait, I wanted to speak with Oliver” and asked me to sit quite close beside him as he is not only blind but deaf now in one ear.’

   ‘His manner changed instantly to a sort of quizzical charm, a scholarly meandering warmth, as soon as we touched on his reality: poetry, words, music. The subjects he ranged over seem like Keats’ description of Coleridge’s rambling conversation on Hampstead Heath: his own composition, done on tape recorder then transcribed and redrafted; emendations of manuscripts of English poets, best examples being Milton and Keats -  problem more complex in Shakespeare, what with quartos, folios and ambiguities of Elizabethan handwriting eg. “O that this too too solid flesh” could also be “sallied flesh” or “sullied flesh” ; then Peter Russell (prompted by my rather nervously-random question, seeing a book of PR’s on the shelf), John had known him a little after the war when he was editor of ‘Nine’, too close an adherent of Pound’s views, maybe his anti-semitism as well; Pound an important poet, despite his disgraceful later politics; foolish to disregard his earlier poetry because of them eg. ‘Sestina: At Altaforte’ does not extol violence but is a dramatic monologue about a violent man; had not met Pound but knew friends who had, John Wain had visited him at St Elizabeth’s and found him “not all there”, disjointed and inconsequent; a great translator, though, esp. his Chinese poems; comparing ‘Cathay’ with Arthur Waley, one says “Blue, blue is the grass” the other “green, green”, in fact blue is the more correct; analysis of colour-terms in different poetries, more ancient verse uses words more for the effects of light than the colour or pigment itself eg. Anglo-Saxon poetry has very few colour-words; one poet who was very disappointed in Pound was Montale, whom John met in Italy – why hadn’t Pound come over to the Hermeticists?

But Pound not really interested in contemporary Italian poetry, too besotted with romanticised view of the past etc. etc.’

    The entry trails off, no doubt unable to reconstruct any further involutions of John’s extraordinary conversational flow. Even these few inadequate jottings, however, may serve to give a flavour of what an audience with him could be like: the vast range of reference, drawing on a profound erudition not just within literature but also across a diversity of other disciplines; the breadth of notable contacts and collaborators stretching back to the Forties, always mentioned casually and never in a name-dropping way; the startling connective-leaps and yokings of heterogeneous elements John’s memory would habitually encompass. What’s missing from this account, however, is the affable humour that was also an integral component of John’s conversation – the anecdotes, asides and quiet laughter he would use to deflate his more earnest pronouncements.

    After being introduced to John by Guthrie McKie - John’s tirelessly loyal and helpful friend, long-term advisor and Watts-Dunton-like organiser - and living as I did only five minutes away from the flat in Artesian Road, I became a fairly regular visitor over the next five years, frequently reading to John in the evenings and later transcribing some of his taped poems, as well as typing drafts into fair-copies on my computer. If Guthrie was away, more practical assistance was sometimes required: opening and reading out mail; shopping for books or stationery; unearthing something John had mislaid in the cluttered flat.

   John was well-known as a supporter and encourager of younger writers (recent poets who have benefitted from his guidance include Jeremy Reed, Matthew Sweeney and Christopher Hope), and it was not long after our initial meeting that he asked to hear some of my own poems. I remember sitting outside the pub almost opposite his door, The Cock and Bottle, apprehensively downing a few pints and scanning my paltry stanzas, wondering how I had the temerity to be reading my work to a genuinely famous poet, someone who had known TS Eliot and been friends with Dylan Thomas and Geoffrey Hill. Beer-emboldened, I eventually went through with the reading, rendered somewhat bathetic by John’s inability to hear my nerve-wracked voice properly – he kept saying “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you, you’ll have to come closer”, until it seemed I was practically shouting my lines only feet away from his good ear, hammering out any subtlety or melopeia I fancied they might have possessed. Although John nodded his assent and made a few helpful suggestions about language and form, I went away feeling my poems had been damned with faint praise. The next time I saw Guthrie, however, he said that John had in fact liked them, thereby (it felt to me) conferring a sort of implicit acceptance.   

   My subsequent visits invariably followed a set pattern of events. I always phoned in advance, to avoid clashing with the numerous other friends and carers who would call on him – evidently he had another acquaintance with the same name, as he would always ask “Which Oliver is this?” John never mastered his building’s intercom system – if you buzzed his flat, he would usually have to navigate his way out into the landing to open the front-door for you, which could take some considerable time and no small effort on his part (attested to by the repeated sighs of “Oh God! Oh dear!” you could hear through the door). When, towards the end of his life, John was obliged to use a frame to move around with, this became even more impractical, and it was much easier to borrow Guthrie’s key and let oneself in.

     You would often enter the flat to find John in darkness, hunched forward listening to the radio turned up loud; either classical music or a documentary programme. You would have to switch the lights on for your own benefit and call out clearly “Hello John!” before he would look up and emerge from his reverie. Moments like this forced one to reflect on the condition of blindness – the shadowy isolation it imposes, the abstraction from physical reality, but in turn the compensatory sensitisation to auditory and verbal signals it seems to allow, obviously a decided advantage for the writer or musician. Despite the hardships entailed in such an impairment, traditions of blind musicians, bards and soothsayers seem to demonstrate a status of cultural respect that is all too often withheld in society from those with other disabilities. (It should be added, however, that John – like Borges - only became completely blind later in life; prior to this he would have been classed as partially-sighted or visually-impaired.)

    After greetings, there was usually the question “Would you like a drink?” Even after many visits, John would always describe the particular cupboard (“down the hallway, on your left”) where his booze was stored, seemingly implying there might be a fair amount to choose from. In my experience, there was invariably very little left – perhaps a half-bottle of red or a little sherry – small wonder, no doubt, in a flat often frequented by poets and with a host largely unable to keep tabs on how much was being consumed! Unfortunately, by this stage, John’s health prevented him from drinking much alcohol (unlike his bohemian Fitzrovia days), but he would always ask for a small tipple as I poured my drink – largely symbolic, I think, as it usually went untouched.

    John’s choice of reading-matter was remarkably eclectic, and reflected the diversity of his intellectual interests and the compendiousness of his knowledge. Although he was obviously concerned to keep up to date with the poetry scene, and would like to hear readings from magazines he subscribed to such as PN Review, Agenda and Poetry Review, he was just as likely to select one of the other periodicals he received, concerning subjects such as folklore, Christianity, history or ornithology. One book I recall reading through to John was an abstruse study of Japanese shamanism written by a friend of his; another was an analysis of symbolism in Sufi poetry. (There were, however, occasional gaps in John’s reading – apart from Joyce, whom we shared an enthusiasm for, he seemed to know little about the modern novel, and avowed that his favourite work in this field had always been Clarissa.)  

   John continued to compose poetry right up until his final illness, producing two full-length volumes (The Return of the Cranes and Pigs Might Fly) in his eighties. While even his most enthusiastic admirer would concede that these contain little that matches up to his best work, the characteristic amalgam of learned wit and reflective stoicism is still apparent, leavened by a fair quantity of occasional and light-ish verse. Yet John’s ear for poetic form remained punctilious and he would often ask for a piece to be read through a good many times – with often very subtle alterations of diction or cadence being insisted upon – before he was satisfied with it. One recalls what an accomplished and sought-after reader of his own work John had been at poetry events in the past, partly due no doubt to this sensitivity to the acoustic properties of English speech-rhythms, and his ability to match these to the measured tones of his sonorous delivery.

    During his last years John became noticeably frailer and, largely immobile, was confined to his flat. Although his memory for Latin and obscure lines of poetry remained undimmed, he seemed increasingly confused and forgetful about everyday matters. I saw less of him at this time. On my last visit, when he had been moved into a hospice near Harrow Road, John no longer recognised my voice. He passed away shortly afterwards, on Boxing Day 2006.

     Lengthy obituaries spoke of a rich and energetic career as a well-known author, translator, critic, editor and teacher always wedded to what he called (to the Queen, when collecting her Gold Medal for Poetry) “the ingrained habit” of writing poems. Since his death, however, there seems to have been no attempt to assess John’s significant contribution to our cultural life, and the gap his absence leaves. His poetic roots were in that generation – numbering Dylan Thomas, George Barker, WS Graham, David Gascoigne and Thomas Blackburn among his closest associates– who were in many ways “the last Romantics”, the last to hold on (precariously enough, given their historical milieu) to the notion of poet as vatic seer – a full-time, perhaps life-threatening commitment to the Muse, not just an academic’s hobby. John’s later development saw him look beyond the late Romantics he had written of so originally  in The Darkling Plain to Augustan models like Pope, consolidating a style of wryly elegant neo-classicism which – like that of Robert Graves – strives to counter the debased currency of modernity with a hard-won, highly-wrought personal mythology. This finds its fullest expression in Artorius (1972), perhaps the only fully-formed epic any contemporary poet has essayed, and a memorable testament to his ambitiousness, linguistic range and imaginative scope. In a contemporary scene notably lacking in these qualities – and indeed in deeply-read, generous-minded, Coleridgean figures like John, devoted to his craft and its lore but always prepared to share knowledge, pass on traditions and foster less experienced poets - a careful revaluation of his reputation and achievements is due.                         
                                                                                First published in PN Review, 2009

Amiri Baraka 1934-2014