Black Holes and Infinity
At the heart of every galaxy is a black hole and at the heart of every black hole is a paradox; a point of infinite tininess and infinite gravity. They call it a singularity.
A handsome, white-haired academic makes infinity signs proliferate across his blackboard. Another reminds me that the universe itself came out of a singularity. The tricksy lighting and clips from old films weren’t really needed (though Sam West did a fine job of the narration; you don’t notice the voice or its personality, only what it is saying), the story told on last night’s Horizon was gripping enough without them.
Maybe I was primed to be gripped. I’ve just finished reading Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods, which features (amongst other things) a radio telescope, planets – and black holes. I loved it. The word that came to mind when I tried to describe it was “romp”, a strange thing to say about a book that is part tragic love story, part personal political manifesto, part anti-war protest, but a romp it is. The writing has such brio, and the thing is shot through with the delight of a mind that says, Look, look what I can do in this world I made. I didn’t want it to end. Or rather, I wanted it to keep on ending, over and over into infinity.
I would love to know if the author had ever seen Battlestar Galactica (“All of this has happened before…”)
Drafting the poem
So, I’ve got this poem. I called it “The Charcoal Bridle”. It came out of a much longer, realistic, narrative poem which was stuffed full of Big Ideas about being a woman, language, mental illness, death, recovery…sounds like a recipe for disaster, right?
The poem I’m working on at the moment popped out, like a shoot from a bulb, and it’s the most peculiar thing, not like the way I usually write at all. By the way, that bulb image isn’t mine. I was lucky enough to be mentored by Lavinia Greenlaw a few years back and she used it as a way of describing what happens when the core of a poem reveals itself inside what might be a perfectly viable draft, but not the real thing. The live, charged, energetic core.
In my case, the strange shoot came from a couple of weird phrses:
as strange as unbroken horses
she has put on the charcoal bridle
and a suggestion by my perceptive poet friend Jemma Borg.
I really don’t know what I’m doing with this poem, only that I like working on it. So, I’m a little freaked out that it’s the one chosen to be Masterclassed at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival. I submitted 5 or 6 poems, none complete, but this is the one that is the least coherent or finished-feeling. And this is the one the organisers have chosen. I suppose that’s good; the other participants will have plenty to say – and hopefully the experience will shed light on what’s at work, but I’m a bit apprehensive. I don’t feel very detached from this one.
Incidentally, if you’re in the vicinity, do visit the Festival. It’s brilliant! I go every year with the Hairy Muse and our friend Crystal Tips – and this year Geoffrey Hill and Phillip Levine (amongst many illustrious others) are reading. See you there?
Invisible Practice
I’m feeling a lot more positive about life than I have been for a while. I’ve even tinkered with a poem. But mostly I’ve been doing all those other things I find myself engaged in whenever I’m gearing-up to a longer period of writing work. You know… sorting out my files and piles of paper, tidying the desk, tidying the room, pacing the room, pacing the house, watching the latest Squirrel-v.-Wood Pigeon grudge match in the garden…
In her wonderful book One Continuous Mistake: Four Noble Truths for Writers (1999, Penguin), Gail Sher has this to say:
Invisible practice refers to tasks that come to your attention primarily when you have neglected them – brushing your teeth, emptying the garbage, straightening your desk. … Invisible practice. It helps to have a dignified name for what we might easily label ungratifying time-wasters.
So that’s what’s been going on, these last few weeks! Invisible practice. I mean, I’m glad that my tax return’s been completed, a load of washing’s been done, but I was starting to get worried. There’d been a lot of haranguing going on in my head (You’re shit. You’re a lazy cow. You’re so up yourself. Who do you think you are etc etc) and not much work on the poems.
So, today, when I’m scared that I won’t finish this manuscript, that I’ll never write another new poem again in my life, I tell myself it’s all right, I’ve been doing my Invisible Practice. And now, maybe, if I edge up to them very slowly, the poems will let me work on them. I mean, I’ll let me work on them.
Hooray for…Asthmatic Kitty!
Not only does this label have a fabulous name, but its logo is really cute! Look! It’s a little cat! A little cat sneezing!
And it’s home to some really great music. I’ve already mentioned D M Stith. But how about My Brightest Diamond? I’ve just bought their Bring Me the Workhorse. Wow.
Here’s my favourite track so far:
Something about the controlled tension reminds me of that P J Harvey song, from To Bring You My Love. You know the one that goes “…little fish, little fish, swimming in the water…”?
Atchoo.
Oh I did like to be beside the seaside…
Southwold 09
…but it was very chilly!
Faber and Faber at 80
I dragged my cold-infested carcass over to the South Bank Centre last night, to attend the event celebrating the eminent publishing firm’s 80th birthday. And I was so glad I went. I’d been feeling a bit alienated from the poems, a bit hopeless, a bit “how will I ever get down in amongst them again?”, not to mention very sorry for myself at having caught a cold so early in Autumn.
But here were the pianist’s hands, fluid over the beautiful piano, while a tenor sang Auden’s words to Britten’s music. And here was Daljit Nagra, as if by magic on a stage, engaging and thoughtful. Here was Wendy Cope, making us unable to stop laughing at her Waste Land Limericks. Here was Alice Oswald, mesmerising us with her reading of Beckett – and my god, in the second half, pointing up her links with Beckett as she read a long poem from A Sleepwalk on the Severn. Something about the pace and, in particular, the use of pitch (and line break, use of white space, I would imagine, to support that). Here was Paul Muldoon, reading Eliot, reminding us again of how funny bits of The Wasteland are, how he really do “do the different voices”.
And here was Seamus Heaney, a little fragile and tired from a ‘flu, but in good voice nonetheless. To hear those poems, so well known, in the orginal voice…magical.
Afterwards, some hasty goodbyes to my friends, and I was flying over Waterloo Bridge, looking up and down the Thames, grinning into the grey-and-orange air. This. This is what I needed, to hear some good – great! – poetry. So, this morning, at last…a helicopter is above our street, so low you can hear the blades rattle. Next door thump up and down their stairs. But I am writing, without worrying about the manuscript or who will want to read it or not. I am writing, pushing the pen over the page, clattering the keys, egged on by the memory of those people on the stage last night; not special, not exalted, just people who write.
And who keep writing, and write wonderful things.
Autumn
I was walking past the church to the tube and heard a familiar sound. A chattering; conversational, wordless exclamations in the air above me. I looked up to see, on the lamposts, starlings, gathered tightly together. The Autumn Migrations, I thought, remembering the lines of Canada geese that queued up in the sky a few weeks ago.
It seems early, all this, but I can’t say I’m sorry. That grey, low sky and the bright leaves like coins…I love them. They suit my furtiveness. I like the sensation that we’re all creeping around in the gap between sky and earth, like woodlice under a brick; concealed, industrious, private. I like the feeling that thoughts can breed.
Tizz
I’m in a tizz. I’ve been selected to take part in the Masterclass at the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival (yeehah!) and I’m trying to choose some poems to send. We’ll only be workshopping one (in front of an audience, ye gods), but the organisers want a selection yada yada yada.
My tizz? I have only just managed to re-establish my writing routine, and to persuade my writing self that it’s ok, I will sit at my desk, I am allowed to concentrate, I don’t have to do anything else- and I’m scared that any distraction (however fantastic, like this amazing opportunity) will haul me up out of it, this safe place.
And now I’m thinking, for goodness sake…get over yourself! Because, distractions or not, the poems get written. I’m currently working on one about an old Maths teacher. I never thought I’d get anywhere with it, but here it is, losing lines and phrases and being edited down despite my faffing-around.
So here are a couple of discarded bits from the poem.
protractor sets and glasses
dagger collars and straining trouser seams
badly-closing windows
hole-punched paper
fingers dry from chalk
dusty arcs
They can live here quite happily while I get on with the rest of the poem.
Squashed!
Horrors! Today, alighting at Liverpool St., I heard behind me an angry voice. OI! it went. And OI! again. When I looked back, a hand, the sleeve of a tweed jacket and a walking stick were protruding from the closing doors.
Hold the doors, driver, please.
Two tube guards, actually running. Three commuters, actually dropping their briefcases and rucksacks. One elderly gent, rescued from his trap. I hope he was ok.
