Aeneid VI by Seamus Heaney: review

I've reviewed Seamus Heaney's Aeneid VI in the June issue of The Oldie. Read it here.

Catullus' Bedspread by Daisy Dunn: Review for The Spectator

I've reviewed Catullus' Bedspread by Daisy Dunn for The Spectator. Read it here.

First Story: Iphigenia at Aulis

In my First Story session at St Augustine's yesterday we talked about the story of Iphigenia, which has always haunted me (and indeed it features a little in The Liberators.) There were some very interesting responses to the story, including a moving look at it from Clytemnestra's viewpoint, and a lusty Achilles. I came up with a short poem:

Iphigenia at Aulis

This morning

I dreamt flame.

The house on fire

My dress a halo.

I told my nurse.

“It’s love,” she said.

“For Prince Achilles.”

And when we left,

I saw an eagle pounce upon

A running hare.

I closed my eyes.

*

The fleet! The men, beery and bored,

Shouting. I caught a sailor’s

Eye. Black teeth, stunted limbs.

My father’s tent. Silken, gold,

Shimmering, a thing not meant for

War. And there he was.

Killer prince. Godborn spearstrong

Violent Achilles. My about–to–be

Husband. He took my wrist.

In his eyes, a fierceness, cold and

Bright. The men all roared.

The sea was calm. My heart.

The altar! Smoking, laden with

Fruits. My father, weeping. I wonder:

Where’s my mother?

I turn to where Achilles stands. His

Mouth is open. He points

Behind me. And then I know. 

I know the terrible 

inevitable chain has

Tightened, pulled, strained.

My father holds no wedding wreath.

In his grip a knife. My heart.

One moment. A shout, and hands

Not his, my dress ripped open,

Shadows on the stone

Everything shuts down.

Hatred: a poem

I led a First Story creative writing workshop today, and we did the Poetry Machine, which generated some great first lines.

Here’s mine, based on “Hate shields you from the rain.”

Hate shields you from the rain,
When you open it.
Usually, it squats in the hall,
Furled like a bat at roost.
When the darkening skies
Split open, I have to run for the
Bus. There’s a spoke missing.
My hatred flaps.
It makes a space, for sure:
Small, private, empty.
But what it doesn’t do
Is keep the wind out.
You’ll still get battered.

Horace and Me by Harry Eyres: Review in The Telegraph

Horace: a poet of the middle age

I seem to have forgotten to put up a link to my review of Harry Eyres' book, Horace and Me, an amiable reflection on the poet Horace and his own life. I did it for the Telegraph, donchaknow: here's the link.

At university I must admit to not really liking Horace as much as I loved Ovid, Virgil, Propertius, Lucretius et. al., but Eyres has persuaded me to have another look at him. Another book on the pile of things to be looked at again, or read for the first time... Currently I want to read Jane Austen again; Samuel Richardson's Pamela (for the first time), finish Pepys' Diaries; and that's not to mention the 100 odd books I have on my "To Be Read" pile, still less the children's books I've got going for the Costa Book Award... Oh, and there's Ford Madox Ford, as well. And I'm trying to catch up on Hilary Mantel and Don DeLillo's backlists. Wish me luck...

Hunger: A poem

 I was running a creative writing workshop yesterday. I usually take part in the exercises, for kicks. Here's a poem that came out of it:

HUNGER
There he is again.
So tiny, to start with.
Flipping a coin, he smirks in the sun.

Under the cracks he creeps,
Tipping his hat, so ruefully,
Brushing the dust off his sleeve.
He squats in the fridge,
Nibbling the potatoes,
Sticking his thumb in the cream.

I let him dance on my table,
Too lazy to banish him.
He uses my fork as a cane.

He’s bigger now: as tall as a
Candle. He yammers, and
Blows out his cheeks.

I put on some toast.
He flickers his tongue.
To end him, you’d have to be dead.

Robin Robertson's Hill of Doors

Bacchus is, naturally, my favourite divine being (see The Liberators): so I was well pleased to see him play such an important part in Robin Robertson's excellent Hill of Doors, which I have reviewed for The Telegraph, here.

Books of the Year 2012

Yuletide be here again, and with it the inevitable lists. I'm not going to do separate ones this year: here they all are, in time for any last minute Christmas shopping that you may be doing. Of course I've already done mine. Naturally. I won't be wandering the shops on Monday. At all.

Here goes:

Alan Garner: matter of Britain

Fiction of the year 2012

Boneland by Alan Garner is a very strange book, but also a very compelling one. It rounds off the story begun by The Weirdstone of Brisingamen in an intelligent and insightful manner. Highly recommended. Another literary offspring is Andrew Motion's Silver, which takes up the tale of Jim Hawkin's son as he returns to Treasure Island. It's a beautiful, glossy creature, and enthralling. Back in Tudorland we find Hilary Mantel on tingly form in Bring up the Bodies: I may be the only person in the world not to love it as much as I loved Wolf Hall, but it's still head and ruff above the rest. In the Orchard, the Swallows by Peter Hobbs is an elegant novella about imprisonment; and Deborah Levy's Swimming Home is a spookily brilliant middle-class holiday novel with a twist. Finally, Ali Smith's Artful is a dazzlingly engrossing semi-fictional meta-fiction, if there can be such a thing: her quicksilver mind and lightning connections will leave you gasping for more.

Non-fiction of the year

I've read no new non-fiction this year at all. A Natural History of Unicorns by Chris Lavers came out a while ago, but it's worth a mention - a charming, lively and enchanting account of the things that make up our conception of the unicorn. I was intrigued to learn that certain herdsmen induce their animals to grow one horn, and make them the leaders of their herds - this gives them greater power. Our horsey, gentle, mystical creature arises from a fascinating mishmash of real animals and legends. City of the Sharpnosed Fish by Peter Parsons also came out a while ago, but is a very enjoyable study of the papyrus fragments that came out of Oxyrhyncus and which don't, on the whole, contain new poems by Sappho, but do show a rich and detailed picture of ordinary life in a Hellenistic Egyptian city. Oxyrhyncus had such a hold on the imagination that the novelist Ronald Firbank wrote a scene in which Professor Inglepin reads a new Sapphic fragment: "In plain English," the professor said with some reluctance, "It means: Could not [he wagged a finger] Could not, for the fury of her feet."

Antigone at the National

Orpheus: The Song of Life by Anne Wroe is as beautiful to read and magical as its subject, whilst The Unfolding of Language by Guy Deustcher is an account of how language is how it is which will leave your brain fizzing with delight and joy.

Poetry of the year

Antigonick by Anne Carson is my overall book of the year. It's absolutely marvellous: spooky, finely-tuned and compulsive, a version of Sophocles' Antigone which powers on like a lit fuse. Sidereal by Rachel Boast  is an extraordinary debut: considered, careful, rich and multilayered, with many striking images: "Behind the house the dark rooms / in a shape called forest." Almost Invisible by Mark Strand is a series of haunting, witty and wise prose poems.

Classics of the year

Loving, Living and Party Going by Henry Green is a new source of celebration for me. These three novels are so rich, and with a sideways approach to language which compels and grips.  Party going in particular is almost indescribably good: dense yet vivid, it takes place in the confines of a railway station whilst all around the fog whirls. Green should be up there with Evelyn Waugh in the pantheon: but he's also one of those writers that I will now keep as a secret favourite, to be savoured often. The Dark Tower by Louis MacNeice is an obscure radio play which is an adaptation of the line "Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came." A strange, dreamy experience. Another obscurer couple of classics which I have rediscovered are Craven House by Patrick Hamilton, a gas-lit study of hypocrisy in a boarding house, and The Violins of Saint Jacques, Patrick Leigh-Fermor's only novel, which tells the splendid tale of a Caribbean island ripped apart. I was reading Edmund Gosse's Father and Son in a crowded pub when someone said it must be a terribly gloomy book because of the grim photograph on the cover: how wrong could he have been. This is a seminal memoir of a youthful spirit breaking out. A special mention should also go to Robert Aickman's banjaxed ghost stories in The Unsettled Dust.

I've been re-indulging in a lot of drama this year: The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar, which I didn't get to see at the Donmar, so read instead - boisterous fun. There are some lines in John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi which still have the power to make me stand and stare; and of course, every time I read William Shakespeare's Macbeth it's like being doused in flame and blood.

Children's Books of the Year

The Changeling by Philippa Gregory is a perfect young adult confection, featuring a devilishly handsome young monk and a beautiful, disinherited aristocrat. Frances Hardinge's A Face Like Glass is as zany and inventive as any of her books, whilst Eva Ibbotson's The Abominables is a swan song for a fine talent. Black Arts by Prentice and Weil is an intelligent thriller set in an Elizabethan London throbbing with spirits, whilst Philip Reeve's Goblins! is a delightful take on the orc-and-sword fantasy.

Caroline Lawrence's The Poisoned Honey Cake is a joy, instructive and witty about ancient Rome; and no boy worth his salt will be able to put down Atomic! by Guy Bass, a comic book mash up throbbing with kinetic energy. More eerie and strange is Fright Forest by Marcus Sedgwick; Kate Saunders' The Whizz Pop Chocolate Shop is a hilarious and clever fantasy featuring a giant talking cat - and talking wallpaper.
My book of the year, though, is threefold - I can't choose between them.  Obsidian Mirror by Catherine Fisher is a blackly brilliant fantasy containing Dr Dee, fairies, time travel and a genie; Maggot Moon by Sall Gardner is a striking and bold young adult novel; and The Diviners by Libba Bray is simply marvellous, featuring quite the best heroine to be found in young adult fiction and beyond, a gin-swilling flapper with psychic powers.

Bummer of the year

The time I spent reading Karl Ove Knausgaard's godawful memoir A Death in the Family is time I would dearly like back. How a book like this can be hailed as a masterpiece across so many countries and yet read like such a draining nightmare is beyond me. It's about as much fun as sticking red hot needles into your eyes whilst somebody drags their nails down a blackboard.

First Story at St Augustine's

Another fun session at St Augustine's this week: we looked at the idea of superfluous immortals, using a poem by Sean O'Brien called, er,  'Protocols of the Superfluous Immortals'. I came up with this:

Fire from heaven

Some days, I like to walk to the
Shops. I buy a pack of cigarettes,
Enjoy the spark of fire.
So easy, it is, now.

What I gave to them.
I watch them, squandering.
I shuffle past some kids,
Kicking a ball about.

I see their smirks.
If only they knew
That once I flew to the
Side of Zeus' throne

And tore the flame of
Knowledge from his
Sleeping fingers.
I fell through space

My limbs so cold
To bring to rough-shod men
The tongues of living thought.

And for that gift
Zeus chained me to a cliff.
An eagle, razor-beaked,
Ripped out my liver, every day.

Agony, it was. Agony
I cannot tell. It filled the
World and the world did not
Hear. 

Now, set free, I pass the
Years by slipping through the
Streets, gazing at you for whom
I died and died again.

I flick my cigarette away.
The boys laugh.
'Move over, grandad!'
I crush the butt. I cough. 

I take my ravaged body
Away, and overhead an eagle
Shrieks a lonely song.
My eyes burn.

PAW

First Story at St Augustine's

I’ve started properly as writer in residence at St Augustine’s, Kilburn. We talked today about abstract and concrete nouns, and how a poem links the two together. We played the surrealist game, which threw up some wonderful definitions:

Revenge is a soft fruit that grows and has skin.
Love makes a big boom.
Humiliation is an L-shaped weapon.
Death is a device to tell the time which ticks loudly.
Guilt is made of sugar.
Jealousy is a large carnivorous dinosaur, or an apex predator.

Here was my attempt at Death:

Death is a device who ticks.
He sits on the mantlepiece,
Kicking his heels. His buttons are
Shiny. ‘I must look smart,’
He snorts, then shoots off up the chimney,
Shifting bones off his sleigh.
Yesterday I saw him on the
Tube. He yanked a man’s hand.
His eyes burned brightly; he looked almost
Holy. You can’t shut the door on him.
He’ll crawl through the cracks.
Root in your drawers,
Steal your toys.
When he’s finished, he’ll shrug, and
Snake off, whistling, to some other
Poor fool, clacking his teeth, and smiling.

First Story Workshop with Caroline Bird

Caroline Bird: Excellent

This year I will be writer in residence at St Augustine's school for First Story, the excellent charity set up by Will Fiennes and Katie Waldegrave. We did some workshops in preparation yesterday with the poet Caroline Bird, in which we wrote poems about abstract nouns.  I don’t write poetry (well, not since I was a teenager and thought poetry meant writing down versions of Nirvana lyrics about blood and hate and so on.) I got "Irritation," and this is what happened.

Irritation

He’s so small he fits into the

Prickle of your eyelids when
You blink. I see him refracted
When I wake. He sits there,
Pleased with himself,
Holding that damned watch
He’s always winding.
Close your eyes, you say.
No good. That gives him
Full permission. Sometimes he does a
Dance, wheeling, prancing piratically.
Sometimes he pulls his baggage along
Rushing for a train he’ll never catch.
You can’t squash him - I tried once,
With a fly-swatter shaped like a
Tennis racquet. He split, calmly, into
Two - then three - pirouetted - and
They built themselves bungalows
In my ear lobes.

Alice Oswald at the Southbank Centre

Oswald: vatic

Hello hello, I've written a short piece about the poet Alice Oswald at the Southbank Centre for The Daily Telegraph, available here. She read her latest book, Memorial, in its entirety. Some of you may remember that I reviewed Memorial for the same paper when it came out, and was blown away by its luminous magnificence.

Books of the Year, Day Three: Poetry

What ho! It's time for the poets. I made it my resolution to read more poetry this year, and have (mostly) succeeded; I've been reading a lot of Horace, Ovid and Propertius, finding much to enjoy in Horatian intricacy and Propertian sophistication. I also, having read an Anthony Hecht poem in an anthology, sought out a collection of his, but didn't find it as elegant or mysterious; I do now have his complete poems though, and hope to discover some gems in it. My collections of the year, then (not all of which came out this year), are as follows:

Sarpedon, carried off by Sleep and Death

1. Memorial by Alice Oswald

Truly a masterpiece. There is a poem by Stephen Spender which contains the phrase "let him not see what I see in this room of miniature Iliad"; and Oswald has captured and shrunk the Iliad with vatic brilliance, the similes, repeated, weaving in and out of the deaths of the heroes with grace and beauty, obliquely bringing to life all that the men will miss when they are dead. Here the lowliest of soldiers is given space; here the sons of kings, prophets, shepherdesses and seals are levelled by the sword, even if you are Sarpedon, son of Zeus. Cold, monumental, yet imbued with light, containing a kind of sorcery, it's not only my poetry book of the year, but most probably my book of the year.

2. Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud, trans. by John Ashbery

Rimbaud: Angel/devil

On here rather than the classics list because of its translation by Ashbery. This is an astonishing book, published by the excellent Carcanet press. Rimbaud was a devil, or an angel; there's a fine, novelistic biography of him by Edmund White. What we must always remember is that he was barely out of his teens when he wrote; he died young, as a gun runner in Africa. The French is alive, shocking, full of startling imagery and phrases that tremble and shiver in the mind; read that first, then the opposing, almost literal translation, and you will find a spear-sharp counterpoint, or a mirror of extraordinary clarity. Apocalyptic and bright and terrible: "Ce ne peut être que la fin du monde, en avançant." "It can only be the end of the world, as you move forward." Also a close contender for actual book of the year.

3. Of Mutability by Jo Shapcott

The Costa winner presented us with a collection full of liquid, joyous poems, including a lovely piece about Ovid: "everything he touched turned to song."

4. White Egrets by Derek Walcott

Another superlative collection, at once classical and sensuous, and richly evocative. The white egrets flitter through the verse as a motif of life, freedom and the approach of death.

5. The Wrecking Light by Robin Robertson

Robertson's quiet poetry is heightened by sudden violence or interesting word choices. His poems seethe with myth, and include (obviously good for me) two versions of Ovid: Pentheus and Dionysus, which shows, capably, the frenzy of inspiration; the second is the daughters of Minyas telling each other tales - in Robertson's hands they become almost fishwivey. 'That's tedious,' one says, after the story of Pyramus and Thisbe.

6. Night by David Harsent

Smooth, elegant, with some beautiful concordances and sounds: "monstrous and moonstruck," making a fine and sensitive collection.

7. Torchlight by Peter McDonald

There is a quiet power in this collection, also published by Carcanet, focusing around a translation of the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which McDonald renders stark and vivid. There are also many lilting, numinous works, including 'Cheetah', which celebrates transience.

That's it for today chaps, see you tomorrow for my non-fiction of the year...

Memorial by Alice Oswald: review

Paris and Helen in the film Troy

I've been very lucky this year with Classics-oriented books to review. I've written about Alice Oswald's beautiful, heartbreaking poem Memorial for The Daily Telegraph, here. It takes the deaths of the heroes and the similes out of the Iliad and sculpts something entirely fresh and exciting.  Each dead soldier is remembered, given life.

Bertie Wooster revisited: Poetry Recital Prize at Thomas' Battersea

Carol Ann Duffy: First past the (last) post

A stonkingly early start today, as I reprised my Bertie Woosterish role (you may remember last time). I was honoured to be giving away the prize at Thomas' Battersea for their Poetry Recital Competition. I was astonished by the quality of the poems chosen and by the way they were delivered. It really gave me heart to think that children at that age can enjoy, understand and delight in reciting such complex and interesting poems. It brought back memories of my own poetry recital competition - I think I slightly optimistically did Byron's The Isles of Greece (I can still remember the first few lines...)

We had brilliantly sinister renderings of Crow’s Fall by Ted Hughes and Mushrooms by Sylvia Plath; an intelligent declamation of Hughes' The Thought Fox too. There was a galloping recital of an old favourite, Tennyson's Charge of the Light Brigade, and a joyous rendering of Daffodils by William Wordsworth. Humour was brought with The Naming of Cats by T S Eliot; poignancy with A Little By Lost by William Blake, and humour and poignancy together with William Shakespeare's All the World's a Stage. The winner, though, was current poet laureate Carol Ann Duffy's Last Post, which was delivered with excellent enunciation and a real sense of the tragedy of war.

Many congratulations to all who took part - it was a sterling collection of candidates. 

Nicola Shulman in Conversation with Alan Jenkins

Wyatt: used bladders

A double rainbow soared over the greying skies of West London; several literary types huddled for comfort and instruction under the aegis of the marvellous bookshop Lutyens and Rubinstein, for a conversation between Nicola Shulman and poet and editor Alan Jenkins (whose Rimbaud translation, Drunken Boats, is out now) about Sir Thomas Wyatt, and Nicky's new biography of the poet, Graven with Diamonds. Nicky spoke about how lines of Wyatt would come to her at significant moments (in particular 'They flee from me that sometime me did seek'), which led her to want to understand what lay behind these seemingly inert poems. We learned that whenever King Henry VIII was rich 'he doesn't make love, he makes war'. We were treated to a reading of a Wyatt poem (to illustrate its potential usage in a courtly game) with appropriate squeaks from a blue heart - Nicky's thesis being that a lot of the poems don't make any sense unless they are referring to an actual physical object such as a heart made from a bladder. When discussing 'they flee from me,' in answering the question 'who', Jenkins said 'Chicks!' An early modern poet was brought to life for us: I'm very glad that he has been sought, and I certainly won't flee from him next time I see him in an anthology. I may even get the collected poems... We repaired afterwards to the home of modern poet Edward Barker, who was himself brandishing the collected works. Outside the sky was blue and red. One thing I wondered, in support of Nicky's argument about hearts, was why playing cards had hearts, spades, diamonds and clubs, if hearts were not also a recognisable object. If anybody knows anything about the origin of these symbols, do let me know.

Books of the Year: Day Four: Poetry

A rhapsodic top of the mornin' to you all on this foggiest of days. Welcome to Day Four of my Books of the Year - in which I give you some poetical delights. Here they come...

1. Faber New Poets 5 by Joe Dunthorne

This little pamphlet showcases the brilliantly ironic, often delicately beautiful talent of the young poet Joe Dunthorne (whose zanily dark first novel, Submarine, was published a couple of years ago). The poems reward re-reading - they explore friendship, memory, childhood and more, all with a sideways, intelligent glance. I look forward to more.

2. In the Flesh by Adam O'Riordan

Another promising debut by a fellow Oxford-ite (and, according to Tatler, Britain's Sexiest Poet), displaying a matured voice, and tackling a range of subjects in careful, studied form that shows both great control and passion.

3. Hesiod's Calendar by Robert Saxton

An excellent adaptation of possibly one of the dullest poems to come out of Greek literature, this is much better than the original. Split into two halves, The Theogony and Works and Days, the poem achieves a lightness of touch and wit that doesn't conceal the harshness of Hesiod's depiction of life.

4. The School Bag edited by Ted Hughes and Seamus Heaney

I read this all the way through in August. It's extremely satisfying to feel the shape of the themes rise up in your mind as you read - they are collected according to a vague, undisclosed scheme - as one moves from the sea, through animals, life, death. There are some true gems here, as well as some of the more canonically recognised poems. My only criticism is that there was too much folky stuff, which does not repay careful reading.

5. Human Chain by Seamus Heaney

Initially I didn't like this very much: but after dipping in a few times, one can appreciate the real craftsmanship of the poems. They seem to be about the ameliorative power of work - the 'human chain' being a physical chain of people passing sacks, as well as a 'chain' of poetry - and also to be hugely aware of death, with Virgil's Book VI (the descent into the underworld) looming large.

Well then, off I go. See you tomorrow for the final list: children's books. Ciao!

Literary Review Grand Poetry Prize

And so today brought with it oddly mild weather, presumably because the gods - or at least the Muses - were feeling beneficial towards Literary Review, which, today, held its 997th (or something like that) Grand Poetry Prize. This award, begun by Auberon Waugh, was intended to promote the writing of verse that 'rhymed, scanned and made sense'. Much harder to do than you would think... Fitzroy Square (I walked past Roger Fry's house as the leaves blew redly around my feet) was the locus for the lunch. Writers descended from all four corners of the earth - or, at least, London and its environs. There was V S Naipaul, grandly seated with his wife Nadira; there was Alexander Waugh playing the piano; there was biographer Jane Ridley in the best red velvet coat I have ever seen. Editor Nancy Sladek gave a toast to Auberon Waugh and the late Beryl Bainbridge (always a favourite guest at the lunch). The room filled with writers and assorted literary types; wine and champagne flowed. Our food arrived: I don't know what it is about potatoes recently (see earlier post about the Oriel Gaudy), but our main course came with some imperially purple ones. The three courses were interspersed with more wine - and light opera, including a song from a musical written by Alexander Waugh called Bon Voyage. The prize (sponsored, with generosity, by the Mail on Sunday) was given by Eileen Atkins, who elegantly read out the winning poem (about cities) by Iain Colley, who accepted it saying: 'I had a whole speech prepared which was studded with witticisms and would comment upon the state of literature'. But he was so blown away by Dame Eileen that he was lost for words.

The lunch continued till four, when I wandered (somewhat erratically) down Piccadilly towards St James'. I popped into the Waterstones', where the excellent children's section (recently remodelled) kindly asked me to sign a couple of copies of The Liberators. Not that most people were interested, though: there was a queue forming for Keith Richards - and he's not arriving till 5pm on Wednesday.

Hesiod's Calendar by Robert Saxton: review

One of the nicer things about being in the literary world is that one comes across, serendipitously, books that might otherwise escape one's notice.In the books cupboard the other day I found, published by Carcanet Press, Robert Saxton's version of Hesiod's Theogony and Works and Days.

It is a brilliantly clear sonnet sequence, full of wisdom and humour. The sonnet has the formality and grandeur of dactylic hexameter, whilst allowing for an extra layer of charm. We have the whole ancient world spread out before us in musical language: 'the fragrant girl who stays / by her mother's side indoors, innocent of the ways / of Aphrodite - more bud than flower still ... Far away, in a jumpled heap / of legs, the octopus in its foreign / realm takes a bite of one foot so as not to starve.' Here is the familiar and the alien together, as Hesiod is at once someone we know ("Have good regard for measure in all you do") and someone whose mores we can wince at: ('choose a wife who's four years past puberty / and a virgin.') Simple lines evoke much: 'Elsewhere dreaming of a sheltering cave / or thicket, forest creatures on the run / panicked by snow, are desperate for sanctuary.'

Saxton's version (he has no Greek) is, to borrow a phrase from his own works, a yardstick to the stars of Greek myth - here the theogony develops at full tilt, from Chaos: 'no dream, no fear, no rain, / only an idiot swirl in a cosmic brew', through the birth of the Olympians and finally 'the stone that Cronus swallowed, now at Delphi.' It is accesible and intelligent, investing what can be a knotty, even dreary work with new vitality.

(Picture: Hesiod and the Muse by Gustave Moreau)

Boxer, Beetle, Beauman

Parties in dirigibles, parties in swimming baths... and now parties in boxing rings, for last night heralded the bright new dawn of Ned Beauman's debut novel, Boxer, Beetle, which has already drawn exuberant praise from reviewers. Plastic beetles pointed the way along the street; under lights so bright we were practically photosynthesising, we stood around an actual boxing ring in Hoxton (in 'London's trendy Hoxton', I should write) and drank wine. Girls in leggings and dresses, boys in cardigans and multicoloured shoes: yes, this was The East. Ned Beauman himself, a ganglyish, soft-voiced chap, gave an excellent speech from the boxing ring. He challenged us all to a fight, and offered half his royalties if he were beaten. Nobody took up the offer: although two of the guests were later seen making an attempt at cagefighting (I think). Beauman also spoke eloquently about the mental landscape around the book, and its place in 'experimental' fiction; in particular he took exception to Gabriel Josipovici. 'Asking what happened to modernism is like asking what happened to punk,' he said. Beauman goes, at a tender age, to be a writer in residence somewhere in Germany. I await his next pronouncement (or tome) with anticipation.

I have spent the last two weeks holed up in Yorkshire, scribbling away at one book or another. Let us hope that good news will follow soon. Whilst there I met the poet Edward Barker, who sent me a poem called The Reader by Richard Wilbur, about an old lady looking back at books she's once read. I urge you to seek it out. It ends:

'Caught in the flow of things wherever bound,
The blind delight of being, ready still
To enter life on life and see them through'.


TO BUY NED BEAUMAN'S BOOK, CLICK HERE