Born to Kill

Sad how TV won't even look at any drama unless it's got some sort of a crime involved. Born to Kill is somewhere in the middle of the heap, not brilliant, not terrible. it's got some pretty crude psychology underpinning it - son of murderer turns out to be psychopathic killer, just like his dad - but a rivetting performance by the lad himself, who's clearly one to watch. Out on the fringes, though, is Daniel Mays as an ex-policeman going through a tricky time. He's a really good actor but he's made a mistake. This is a crap part, lousily written, which makes him look like a pathetic wimp and doesn't give him the chance to build anything of any interest. A tough reminder, as if we didn't know, that it has to be there in the writing or it won't be there at all. 

Autumn

And here it is - Ali Smith's Brexit novel. Who could resist? My wonderful local library branch is still able to answer most of my requests, and here comes Ali's latest, for a bargain 60 p. As always, it's a treat. Lots of witty jokes and wordplay, a deep love of humanity, and much appropriate sadness about the way the Brexit debate has sioled us all. It's not just the decision; it's the manner of the argument, the bitterness on both sides that it leaves, whatever the outcome. and as I'm reading, i know I'm in good company, that Ali's suffering along with the rest of us, while also sharing her thoughts on the artist Pauline Boty. So it's thoughts, diary, essay, at times a poem - in fact, it's hardly a novel at all, but who cares? thanks, Ali - we need you more than ever. 

Days Without End

I've known for some time that Sebatsian Barry was a writer worth watching, but "Days Without End" really is special. It doesn't sound that appetising. Two gay soldiers involved in a violent war with Indian tribes - still interested? the subtlety and detail with which it's written is just fascinating. As I read through I kept keeping note of particular passages which struck me - describing what it was like for a young man to put on a dress and dance with soldiers; the sensation of driving rain; how it feels to be carrying out a massacre of defenceless civilialns; the effect of Famine on an Indian tribe. Versatile, yeah? you feel he can do anything and make you believe it. A book to treasure. 

Breaking Point?

This is the title of the poetry booklet I launched in Much Wenlock this evening. It was a gorgeous night, though the attendance was small - as ever, there was a long list of people who really would have liked to come, but...what mattered is that those who were there did want to come, were interested in the poems and the issues, and stayed to eat, drink and talk about them.

The poems are all about migration. The idea was to look at migration from various angles - historical, geographical, psychological and political. there's a tone of research that's gone into this - thorough reading of the Guardian most days (and the filing system that results from that) as well as books and TV programmes. There's even a poem called "Chorus of the Trolls" using some of the tweets received by Lily Allen and Gary Lineker.  

I know I'm not like most poets. I'm happy to make use of information - sometimes in some detail; I like regular forms - so there's sonnets, a ballad rhymed couplets and a villanelle; and i'm not shy about political commitment. I think the Farage side of the leave campaign was despicable, and am strongly opposed to the explicit hostility to migrants which has resulted from the campaign. So there. I'm not, of course, on the front line, but Wolverhampton city of Sanctuary are, and the booklet is being sold to raise money for them. £72.00 in the first week, which is not a fortune but is better than nothing. 

Civilised LRB

It's a bonus of retirement that I think I have sufficient time and money to maintain a subscription to the London Review of Books. that lets me in for some serious reading, some of which I can anticipate. In the issue I'm currently reading, for instance, I'm not surprised to find David Bromwich on how to respond to Trump, or Michael Wood's take on Moonlight. what comes as a massive bonus, though, is the obscure stuff I wasn't expecting - Rory Stewart on the accounts of Aleppo written in the eighteenth century by two Scottish brothers, who lived and worked there for years. Even better is a glorious essay on Hogarth, which starts from the obvious satirical stuff which I knew already, but moves on to some gorgeous, warm portraits I had never heard of - which are fabulously reproduced. Hannah Osborne and Thomas Coram, on p.10 of the LRB of Feb 16th. I take my time, I learn new stuff, I feel wiser and happier about the world. I know - I'm very lucky. 

NW

There's so much drama on TV which doesn't quite make it - works hard, briefly promises, but just fails to convince or goes over the top, that it's a treat to welcome something that just feels totally right. Turning the whole of a novel into one 90-minute chunk feels like a huge risk, but for me the version of Zadie Smith's NW shown on BBC 1 was entirely convincing. Real characters, dialogue and situations. A huge range of background and character, but rooted in an utterly real London - part of whose identity depends on that rich variation within limited space. The friendship of the two main women, tied together but different in so many ways, was sympathetic and detailed, drawing you in. A mix of moods, no dull or stupid moments, just an hour and a half of sensitive intelligence and absorbing viewing. Such a treat. 

Trump Aftermath

Owen Jones and Naomi Klein are on the same page. No, they really are. In today's Guardian, two of my favourite gurus are piecing themselves together after the result of the US election, and - like they do - looking forwards. Last year in my Christmas circular I picked out their books as highlights of my year's reading - The Establishment, and This Changes Everything, both ambitious, patient, incurably optimistic. So I know what they'll say. They'll say don't despair, that's what the enemy wants you to do. Keep thinking, work together, find issues where there are leverage, and make change - like people do, all the time, sometimes an inch at a time. I know they're right, but God, it's hard. 

Elena Ferrante

While the fuss has all been about the unmasking of the reclusive writer, I've carried on with the real work, and just kept reading. it's been a total pleasure. This sequence of Neapolitan novels are advertised as a portrait of female friendship, and they're certainly that, but so much else as well. snippets of post-war Italian history, the changes in the neighbourhood, politics, business, and the whole drama of Elena's emergence as a writer - not simply a triumph, but an up/down helter-skelter ride. I've just finished the third one, "Those who leave and those who stay", which looks as though it's just about leaving home or not, having the nerve to break away from a poor Naples neighbourhood. But as it goes on it intensifies, and becomes about other kinds of leaving and staying - adultery and marital betrayal. And as Elena goes through shifts of contradictory feelings and behaviour, we're with her all the way, soppy as that sounds. there may well be tough-minded women out there saying that this is nothing like how it really happens, but I was and am totally convinced. If you're looking for something to read, log on to the library website, and all four volumes are sitting there waiting for you.   

A fistful of poets

Yes, more poetry. We are so lucky. Thanks to the glory of literary festivals (Birmingham and Wellington, Shropshire), I get to see four poets in four nights - Wendy Cope, Benjamin Zephaniah, Liz Berry and Moniza Alvi. If none of those names make any sense, take it from me that's an enormous range - between rhymed and unrhymed, comic and serious, political and sensual, contemporary and traditional. I'll get to hear each of them read their work and talk about it, and often in the talking there's a little nugget dropped which makes additional sense in understanding poems I already know. Can't wait.  

National Poetry Day

So, of course, I wrote a poem. Well, I knew I was going to, for a couple of days. First there was Jeremy Hunt at the Tory Party conference, confident that in no time at all he'd be able to staff the new approved, no-foreigners NHS. No surprise there. He knows about this stuff. He's been responsible for more British doctors leaving the NHS than anyone in history, so presumably you just turn the switch the other way, and it's all hunky dory.

then I remembered an amazing snippet from four years ago. Hunt was in trouble over the B Sky B negotiations, because he'd been cosying up to the Murdochs. Michael Gove, another Murdoch acolyte, toured the Radio studios in Hunt's support, saying why he should keep his job. Because he was intelligent and far-sighted? Oh, no. Because he was a terrific Latin American dancer, and did "an amazing lambada." You couldn't make it up.

That gave me my central image, the fluent, agile Hunt, dancing out of trouble. So I sat at the breakfast table in my dressing gown, finishing off the coffee and toast as I scribbled a twelve stanza account of Hunt's career - all rhyming, over 20 rhyme-sounds, but none of them with "Hunt." Cut it down to 8, send off a couple of begging e-mails, and that evening I'm performing it at Liz Lefroy's poetry evening in Shrewsbury. That was my part of National Poetry Day, and I had a ball.  

Suddenly, poetry is hot...

Poetry on the box. Who'd a thunk it? for years, telly averts have used doggerel which makes you want to curl up and die. Now Nationwide have the nous to use good poets like Hollie McNish, writing decent poems, which are about real people and not just flogging mortgages.

And now BBC of all places, has two hours of poetry on a Saturday night. Amazing. Railway Nation has a varied relay of writers, getting on and off the London-Glasgow train, just like Auden's Night Mail. Liz Berry, sly, observant and affectionate, picking up on the little horses in the Midlands landscape, but also on the vitality of two girls in her compartment. Andrew McMillan, sounding lyrical and intense, in the course of simple observation - we don't get that every weekend.

But after that comes Kate Tempest, sweeping in like a hurricane, somehow remembering a varied, detailed, humane monster of a poem with music, Let them Eat Chaos. Totally breathtaking.    

Ten Letters

I go to lots of poetry readings, and they're pretty varied. most of them are a mixture, good things, average things, things that need a lot more work. So it was a real pleasure last night to go to the Mac to hear Ten Letters, a sequence of poems about Birmingham. The poets involved were areal mix, in race, social background, gender and age. There were reflections on the changing face of the city, anecdotes from the Austin factory, memories of school and a stunning piece about the victims of gang violence. All of the performers had learnt their pieces, and clearly worked on how to present them  - no mumbling introductions, embarrassing pauses, or poems that outstayed their welcome. Each piece started with a short piece of video, a large picture of the next poets, briefly talking about their relationship with the city - then the lights come up, and they're standing there, launching into their poem. Wonderful stuff.  

What are we allowed to say?

As the world, and the media, get sillier by the minute, an old fogey takes refuge in old-fashioned rational argument. The London Review of Books is an extravagance, in that it gives its writers time to develop what they have to say, but those writers are generally not waffly and self-important - they take the time because they need go to go into detail, and one of the abvantages of being retired is that I do have time to spare for such reading.   

For instance, in the current edition there's a long article by David Bromwich on free speed. Rushdie, Charlie Hebdo, no platforming in US universities, and a lot more besides - including Timothy Garton Ash's current book on free speech. there's nothing in the article which is far fetched or outrageous, and lots of moments where I think - "yeah, maybe that's what I thought when..." But the overall effect is of gratitude, that I feel wiser, clearer, less confused. Somebody out there is serious about making sense of the world.   

The Gift that keeps on giving

Which may sounds like a strange introduction to Dominic Chappell, the walk-on part in the major tragedy that is Philip Green's career at BHS. (If you want the scores, PG sold BHS to DC for a pound. DC took £17 million out of the company; PG took £571 million). So I hadn't paid much attention to Dominic, until a couple of walk-on appearances in last week's Guardian grabbed my attention.

He'd got a £1.5 million interest-free loan from BHS so that he could rescue his parents' home from the threat of repossession, but was waving away any subsequent discussion of this with the assurance that he and his father didn't talk about such matters and it was nothing to do with him. Then he got picked up for driving at 64mph in a 40mph area (despite already having ten points on his licence). His lawyer pleaded for him not to be disqualified, partly because it might mean that he had to travel by train - and the last time Dominic travelled on a train he'd received critical comments on his conduct at BHS. 

The comic poem that resulted (see Special Pleading in Poems from the News) almost wrote itself, but none of the details, however outlandish - e.g. Chappell telling the speed cops that he used to drive a racing car - was made up. He did it all himself, and the sense of entitlement is just gob-smacking.

Lucia Berlin

It's a funny kind of feeling. A friend is telling you about this terrific writer, of whom you've never heard, insisting that although she died in 2004 and you've never heard of her, you really ought to read this 400-page book of short stories. So you're a little bit piqued, because how could they be that good and you not know about it, but the book's there and you give it a try. and then that wave washes over you - how could I be so stupid? Why offer any resistance at all to something as varied, as talented, as witty as this? She's like a streetwise Alice Munro, subtle in observation of detail and character, but tougher and more direct. There's stuff in here about drink and drug addiction which feels totally convincing, but she's not showing off or trying to rub your nose in the dirt. She's telling you how it is - for this person, and that person, and that situation. Such variety, and some of them really short - just a few pages, they do their job, and she moves on to something else.  the collection is called A Manual for Cleaning Women. Stephen Emerson, who put it together, concludes his introduction like this   - "Myself, I can't imagine anyone who wouldn't want to read her." No, I hadn't heard of her either, but he's right. 

Line of Duty

So that's it, done and dusted, series 3 of Line of Duty comes to an end. Already, they know there'll be a series 4, and yes, I suppose I'll watch it, but each time the mixture gets diluted. The core of it, the interrogation stuff, is still terrific, but there's too much else that isn't convincing. Kate going undercover, Craig Parkinson doing his crook cop act again (why did we have to know from the start what he was doing?), and the whole simplified, over-personal storyline around the Polly Walker character - none of this was really worthy of Line of Duty as we've known it in the first two series.  Daniel Mays was wasted before he began, which is why they had to bring Lindsay Denton back, and lean so heavily on series 2. Yes, it's been great, but i'm not sure it needs to be kept going for ever, not if this series is anything to go by. Why do they always have to recycle stuff, beyond its sell-by date?  

Undercover

Really sad, the day you part company with a show you'd hoped to enjoy. Undercover had all sorts of things going for it - serious presentation of a black family, engagement with complex political issues, stunning performers. But tonight i just couldn't stop shaking my head, and turned off. It's partly the real-life objections, from the partners of undercover policemen, this it isn't actually this way. Living in marital harmony with Adrian Lester for 20 years, before it comes out that hey, actually he's a cop. you can see why they wouldn't want to make him too obviously sick, but then what other kind of person would deliberately chat up, sleep with and then marry someone without telling them what they were up to? But it's not just that. It's the over dramatised flying top the US and back again, only to shout at a judge that her client is at risk. It's getting the DPP job and then deciding hey, all the resources in this organisation will be devoted to investigating a case from twenty years ago. Nothing happens this simply, in isolation, but because Maya's played by a terrific actress they assume she doesn't need to work or talk with anyone else. Charging down a corridor swapping barbed lines with a stuffy politician is fine for the West Wing, but it'snot how stuff actually happens. I tried, but enough is enough.      

Victoria Wood

Absolutely gutted. No, we can't afford to lose her. I remember going on course about TV sitcom writing a few years back, with lots of sharp young things, and getting very condescending looks when I said I rated dinnerladies.  And tonight I got out the old VHS tape of "An audience with Victoria Wood" just to listen to the finale again - the utterly stunning Ballad of Barry and Freda. Yes, you. Let's do it - or Beat me on the bottom with a Woman's Weekly. Yes, that one. Mounting rhythm and fabulous internal rhymes - they don't make 'em like that any more, but then they never did. The show was attended by all kinds of celebrities, and the camera keeps sweeping through the audience, picking out big names, helplessly laughing, obviously recognising that they ware watching and listening to someone very, very special. She was always unique, a real national treasure.  

Us and Them

That's the title of a poetry booklet i put together last year, with the subtitle - "the war in error." It's about the way the West has presented and reported the War on Terror. the final poem in it deals with homegrown, a play set in a London school, charting the process of how teenage kids might be attracted to go to Syria. It was, sadly, closed down before its first performance.

This week, Gillian slvo and Niholas Kent have launched Another World, a different piece of verbatim theatre, also exploring the radicalisation of young Muslims. The authors of Homegrown objected that this was an attempt by white liberals to divide the world into good and bad Muslims. I haven't seen either, but I'm sure that there's room for more than one dramatic exploration of this territory - if ever there was topic that called for subtlety and intelligence, it's this one. Treating radicalisation as a virus, and doubling prison sentences at the sound of the word 'Syria' isn't going to be a lasting solution. 

So many poets, so little time...

And here comes Wenlock poetry Festival, one more time. But this year it's different. As poet-in-residence, there are six slots on the programme where I feature, plus three events that I really want to go to as a customer - and that doesn't leave room for much else. So glad I caught the brilliant but unassuming Jonathan Edwards in Shrewsbury last week, because i have to miss him here. I'm running a workshop so I simply haven't time to go to anyone else's, but if I did it would be Andrew McMillan's - I've been reading his Physical, fascinated by what it says about dads and sons, and marvelling at the distance between his poems and his dads'. Talking of poets who write stuff I could never write, there's also Steve Griffiths' marvellous late love poems - I went to his launch in Ludlow, so that means it's OK to miss him here. There's more good friends and good poets I'll miss out on - Emma Purshouse with Nailmaker's Daughters (what a fabulous cover that collection has) and I can't go to Chris Kinsey's session, because I'm busy launching my second collection with Thirza Clout - that's 2.00 pm on Saturday, folks. Yet again, it is all happening - but we get to what we can.