Mark Wallinger won the 2007 Turner prize for his reconstructon of peace campaigner Brian Haw's protest outside the Houses of Parliament against Britain's war in Iraq. Wallinger picked up the lucrative and prestigious gong courtesy of Brian Haw's heroism, without actually subjecting himself to any of the difficulties Haw faced during his long, arduous and dangerous vigil. I thought of this after reading that Wallinger has won a commission to put a lifelike sculpture of a horse in the Kent coutryside. The only imaginative element of this creation will be that it will be "so huge that a person standing next to it will be no taller than one of the horse's hooves" (The Guardian). Someone should have told Wallinger the real meaning of the phrase "big ideas". As it is, the sculpture looks set to become an eyesore for years to come. There's a similarly monstrous creation in St. Pancras station: under the magnificent (and beautifully restored) Victorian ironwork there's a gigantic bronze of a man and woman. It doesn't take a Jonathan Swift to point out that the more the human figure is magnified, the more grotesque its features become. From whence did these artists get the notion that enlarging things to immense proportions makes them intelligent or interesting? Or is it just that they needed projects that justified a huge grant, but didn't risk challenging authority or any preconceived ideas?

Shearsman reading, London: Robert Sheppard, Philip Kuhn.

First up, Philip Kuhn, who who publishes hand-crafted books and runs poetry readings at his home in Devon. I didn't know his poetry before, but enjoyed his reading; the poetry is one of Jewish identity and spirituality, which draws on the sacred texts of Judaism, and is densely-textured and allusive. Highly unfashionable, but none the worse for that. The work lent itself well to reading aloud, and Kuhn's measured pace brought out the musical aspects of the text.

Next, Robert Sheppard, reading from his new Shearsman book "Warrant Error" (that's "war on terror". ed.), a series of 100 sonnets culled from the public rhetoric and private fears of the post-9/11 world. Sheppard was how I imagined him to be: bullish and energetic, with a booming voice, and a reading style that mixed registers and emphasised phrases with jerky movements and fidgety energy. I'd bought the book and read some of the sonnets as I listened, which I don't normally do, but felt I needed some anchoring as the unstable and disjunctive text was hard to grasp at first listening. Great stuff, very enlivening.

I chatted to Laurie Duggan and Frances Presley at the break, and afterwards Tony Frazer went to a restaurant and assorted others went to a pub. I, by some misunderstanding, did both, so was lucky enough to chat to Tony over a meal and Philip Kuhn over a beer.

6am the next morning, when I got up for work, was painful, but it worth it.

Here's something remarkable: a BBC radio programme about poetry which is actually half-decent. Nay, truly excellent in fact. It's about the poetry renaissance in Newcastle in the 1960s, and was made by Lee Hall, director of "Billy Eliot", a Geordie who turns out to know his stuff. You'll hear bits of readings by Basil Bunting, Hugh McDiarmid, Bob Cobbing, Yeats and Pound, and enlightening interviews with Bunting, MacSweeney, Tom Pickard and Connie Fisher, among others. Some great snatches of Bunting reading Whitman and Wordsworth. It's called A Strong Song Tows Us.

Poesy is the flower of the Sun, and disdains to open to the eye of a candle

Unlimited free visits to Litter for anyone who can identify the source of this quote. It's been bugging me for some time. Come on, you erudite bunch! Is it a real quotation, or have I invented it? (In which case, is it any less real...?)

Quote now corrected, thanks to Sam Ward (see comments)

Alexander Hutchison at the Flying Goose

Went to an excellent reading at a crowded Flying Goose last night. Readers were Australian (tho British-born) Adrian Caesar, and Scottish Alexander Hutchison. Caesar's reading was fine, in fact quite entertaining. I don't know his work, but I suspect it falls into the 'anecdotal' category; at least most of it did, though I liked the last poem he read, about coal miners (sorry, can't be more specific, never having read the man's work, I'm going from what I heard two 15-minute listenings).

Alexander Hutchison was an excellent reader, with a somewhat bardic persona which he pulled off well, helped by his sing-song voice. He broke into song on two occasions, and the unaccompanied singing to folk-style tunes was very effective. I don't know his work well, having only read his book 'Carbon Atom'; that book struck me at first as well-crafted, literary verse (I've mentioned before the kinship with Gael Turnbull, who was a friend of Hutchison's). The reading brought out the lyrical aspect, and on the bus home I re-read some of the poems and seeing them in this new light gave them added force. One passage which stood out for me during the reading:

Warty newts and fire-bellied toads
continue your aquatic and sociable ways.
Natterjacks of heathland and dunes (your loud
rolling call like a ratchet). Corncrake
of bogland and grasses; fugitive, invisible.

It's certainly made me want to read more of Hutchison's work.

The audience was full of poets, publishers and literatii. I went for a pint afterwards with Sam Ward, who showed me a mock up of the next Skysill pamphlet, which happens to be by Yours Truly. I met printer/publisher Ian Collinson, who agreed to review the new Martin Stannard book for Litter, and I met Andrew Duncan, whom I petitioned for some poetry for said e-zine. I also met... and talked to... etc...

Anyway, a worthwhile way to spend an evening. Next Tuesday it's the Shearsman reading in London with Robert Sheppard and Philip Kuhn.

This is amazing. Take a look at David M James's blog, which is "... a book of pictures, the subject being readings of poetry in the North-East of England from 1969 to 1987".

Some sections of 'The Book of Random Access' have appeared in issue 17 of The Hamilton Stone Review. Many thanks to editor Halvard Johnson.

‘suckling poets should be fed on Darwin till they are filled with the elegance of things seen or heard or touched'

Basil Bunting

Born on this day, 200 years ago. He wasn't an old man with a white beard all his life. Here he is just after he'd circumnavigated the globe in a sailing ship.

"It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life..."

from "The Origin of Species" (1859)

My ersthwile poetry buddy Martin Stannard has brought out a new book. I haven't seen it yet, but it contains the poems in the Leafe Press pamphlet 'Coral', and I'm looking forward to getting a copy. Martin has jumped ship from Nottingham and now lives in China, so our days of meeting for a pint in The Lincolnshire Poacher on Mansfied Road are sadly, long over. Martin now has a blog on which he posts his current output - apparently throw-away pieces, humorous, casual, slightly surreal. At least he makes them look throw-away. But try writing stuff like this and you'll find it's anything but easy to do. Here' a couple of samples:


POEMS OF IMPROVEMENT (2)

diary poems are so dull
like there is nothing
else to write about

I just saw 21 nuns a-walking


IN POEMS THINGS STAND FOR OTHER THINGS (4)

If we pump the lake into a balloon and cast it to the sky it will burn
Fall at all these feet and these wheels there is not room enough look down
Sudden onset of herds of thinkings of flocks of distractions of what
Is heading for the instant your smile explodes so the world can vanish

The new book (these poems are not from it) is £8.95 (incl. postage). ISBN: 978-0-905127-14-9 from Shadowtrain.
For more information, email shadow2train@yahoo.com