Roy Fisher in Nottingham

The Flying Goose is a small venue, but even so, to fill it to the point of having to turn people away - which happened last Thursday, is quite something. The draw was veteran British poet Roy Fisher, thought his co-reader, Matthew Welton helped by pulling in students from his creative writing course.

First, Matthew Welton. I don't like to crudely categorize Welton's poetry - but I will, for those who've never encountered it; it's influenced by Wallace Stevens and by process-driven poetry such as that of John Cage, and it combines lyricism with text-generation techniques; a lot of his poetic constructions are based on numbering systems. Anyway, it's very good. Welton read his entire set from memory; an impressive feat, though puzzling to me, as the gesture seemed at odds with the post-modern thrust of his poetry. On the other hand, it did add a performative aspect to the reading. Is reading from memory a conservative, anti-radical act? Is it denying Derridian notions of the primacy of writing? Interesting questions which probably should be discussed here, if one had time...

All but two of the poems read by Roy Fisher were from his new collection 'Standard Midland'; this was nice to see, as, aged eighty, he's not looking back, but concerned with the here and now. He opened with the very funny poem 'The Poetry Promise' - a send-up of the quality assurance platitudes we see everywhere. Fisher may be a little frail now, physically, but his mind is as sharp as ever; a number of other poems were dryly humorous; but not all: he read some poems made out of the close observation and description for which he's admired. August Kleinzhaler has described Fisher's poetry as 'devoid of charm' - as Kleinzhaler is a big admirer of Fisher, I take this to mean that he likes the way Fisher never uses ornamentation, doesn't employ verbal effects for their own sake. During the reading I was struck by how direct Fisher's language is, and how - no matter how abstruse it gets - is always based on language you would hear in everyday conversation. When Matt Merritt says that Fisher is 'willing to use whatever subject matter, and whatever tools, come to hand', I think he's right in the sense that Fisher doesn't strive for anything beyond what's needed to do the job; and his poetry therefore is about as grounded in the real world as poetry can be.

My review of Roy Fisher's Collected is on Litter, and there's a good article on him by Robert Sheppard here.

Roy Fisher in Nottingham 28.10

I've been reading Roy Fisher's new collection, and very much enjoying it. Fisher is a master, and, at
eighty, writes like someone who has nothing to prove. There is some moving poetry in this collection; there's also the trademark wit, and the spare, undorned language Fisher is famous for. You get a feeling that he enjoys practising his craft.

So, I was excited to learn that Fisher is reading at my local poetry cafe; the Flying Goose, in Beeston, on 28th October. The reading is part of a two-week Beeston International Poetry Festival, organised single-handedly by the redoubtable John Lucas. I'll post more details on the festival shortly, but one of the events is a launch of Ernesto Priego's new Leafe Press book, combined with a reading by Leafe poet C.J. Allen.

A discussion on Todd Swift's blog about mainstream vs innovative poetry, which references a revaluation of Seamus Heaney on Jacket, put me in mind of a poem by Roy Fisher:

SETS

If you take a poem
you must take another
and another
till you have a poet.

And if you take a poet
you'll take another, and so on,
till finally you get
a civilization: or
the dirtiest brawl you ever saw -
the choice isn't yours.

'You are Here' by Simon Turner

Simon Turner is a young (under 30) poet and this, his first collecton, arrived here last week. And very welcome it was too. It's various, unprogrammatic and shows a nice development from early work with Buntingesque phrasing and 'nature' as its subject, to work influenced by the likes of John Cage. It's also nice to see a homage, in the section Brumagem, to Roy Fisher, another poet of the English Midlands. I hope to get this book reviewed properly for Litter, but in the meantime it's good to have it, and good to see a poet starting out with an opportunity to be showcased in a substantial collection like this (over 100 pages) - nice job by Heaventree Press.


From Swifts

...Lacking patience for the sentence,
its measured pace, its clarity,
they score doodled garbles
on the skied white, body their whipped brisks
through poplarish highs & pining dwarfs
to leaf their shivered greens
with a flown and flying go


'You are Here', Simon Turner. pub. Heaventree Press, £7.99. ISBN: 978-1-906038-05-2