Mick Herron

It’s such a pleasure to discover a really good writer who’s written four or five books but somehow you’ve not heard about. I read a review of the latest Mick Herron and thought “Yeah. Maybe - why not?” Which is exactly why libraries exist. No need to pay big money or sacrifice precious shelf-space; just put in a requet and see what comes.

I was knocked out. For Le Carre fans there’s the usual pleasures of delving down into a murky, amoral world - but with the key difference that there’s a lot of jokes. Really good jokes, that you don’t see coming, in the dialogue and the needle-sharp description. It’s a rely pleasure to read, but it also hums along at a rate of knots, so you never get bored.

A tiny sample, one of many: “Perhaps de Greer had simply decided she’d had enough, and gone to seek more agreeable company: a bunch of drunk golfers, or a basket of rats.” It’s not a big deal, but there’s a constant supply, and there’s also smart plotting and confident movement between different characters. A writer who won’t ever be boring, but keeps me interested and entertained - and I’ve still got plenty to go.

The Three Ps, again

I have, I know, used spaces on this blog already to sing the praises of the poetry collective Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists. During the pandemic they did astonishing work to sustain the poetry community, organising readings and workshops. They have huge energy and good humour, encourage a wide variety of clientele from experienced poets to total newcomers, familiar friends to absolute strangers. And all this with ferocious modesty, never grabbing the odd five minute slot to promote their own work..

So on Saturday it was a rare treat to sit in the Arena Theatre, as part of the lucky audience for “Whose Round is It, anyway”. Their post-lockdown show features set-piece performed poems, knitted together with commentary and creative banter. The whole thing is a celebration of pubs and friendship, of jokes and intelligent writing, and it’s full of wit, warmth and life, all of which have suffered from the combined threat of covid and incompetent government.

They’ve taken this show on tour, but here they were back on home ground, in the Black Country, with friends and fans who knew exactly what was coming, and couldn’t wait. We were so lucky to be there, and yet again we’re in their debt. So thanks Steve, Emma and Dave - please keep doing what you do.

We Know We're Right

This week’s newspapers are understandably full of the arrogance of Truss and Kwarteng, who just know that their policies are right, so they don’t need any objective evidence to get in their way. They dismiss the old-fashioned assumption that nobody knows everything, that’s it’s helpful to look at someone else’s view before you take a crucial decision, that the OBR might have a role. .

That’s true of both of them personally, but it’s also been hardened into a principle of government. Sneaking under the radar is the less media-friendly figure of Therese Coffey, who’s another passionate believer in self-sufficiency, with an established track record of ignoring what other people know while she pursues what she wants to do anyway.

At DWP she pursued a vindictive policy of harassing claimants, in the belief that making their lives miserable and cutting off their money would result in more of them finding jobs. The Select Committee weren’t convinced that this was actually working, so they asked her to carry out a review of the policy’s effectiveness. She did, but she then refused to publish the results. At Health, one of her first actions has been to cancel a thorough, necessary enquiry into the impact of inequality on illness and treatment. If it helps to absorb the unpleasant implications of this approach in light verse, see The Blinkered Dormouse in www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk/poemsfromthenews

Writing to a Theme

Last night I went to PASTA in Wolverhampton, one of my favourite poetry gatherings. It’s small, friendly and informal, but its distinctive feature is that the first half consists of poems written to conform to a particular theme. Last night’s was FRUITFULNESS. No, not the obvious magnet for inspiration, until I belatedly recalled schooldays learning about the imagery of Keats. I went back to his Ode to Autumn, and I was away.

Eleven lines to each verse, and a rhyme scheme that goes ababcdcdcce. That may look like gobbledegook, but for me it was all I needed, as the latest from the Truss government piled up to create a rich harvest of lunacy. No, it won’t win prizes or change the world, but it’s such a lot of fun to do, and I just cannot understand why so many talented poets decide that they want nothing more to do with regular rhythms or words that rhyme. If you want to see the result, my Ode to Autumn 2022 is at www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk/poemsfromthenews

And the PASTA evening? Just brilliant. A powerful indictment of the Truss shambles with a biblical refrain (“by their fruits shall ye know them”), an A level student who’d been reading Christina Rossetti, a brilliant comic video, and a celebration of strawberry and mango toilet paper, together with appropriate props. What more could you ask?

Marriage

The TV channels have to keep turning out drama series just to survive, and some of them roll off the production line with very little impact. “Marriage”, though, is a bit special. It’s very different, and as a result has divided reactions - with a load of people dismissing it as slow, uneventful, boring.

It’s a four-hour exploration of a family, and a marriage in particular, without huge dustups or dead bodies, and some have turned off as a result. I think its brilliant. I’m biased, because I loved “Him and Her”, and “Mum” - each very different, but warm, detailed studies of relationships. And as usual, good writing attracts great actors, so Sean Bean and Nicola Walker aren’t there by accident.

There isn’t showy dialogue, because a lot of what’s important is what isn’t said, what might be thought but for various reasons remains unexpressed, which might or might not be a good thing. There’s a wonderful moment when their teenage daughter complains about them holding stuff in, not being honest - which leads to two separate outburst of truth-telling, each devastating in their own way. Necessary maybe, but certainly not a simple moral lesson which doesn’t carry a cost.

No, it’s not for everyone, but it’s certainly worth a try, and I’d be amazed if anyone watched all four hours and then thought it wasn’t worth it.

Russia in Ukraine

Close regular readers of The Guardian have a fairly good idea of how the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been disastrous for Russia as well as for Ukraine, but it’s still rivetting to have that confirmed from the inside. yesterday’s edition carried a detailed, articulate statement from Pavel Filatyev, a former Russian paratrooper who’d gone public about his disenchantment with the campaign. Part of this is old-fashioned moral outrage - “I don’t see justice in this war, I don’t see truth here.”

That leads to scepticism about military commanders and Putin himself, which he says is widely shared though not openly expressed. But the most convincing, depressing account is of the effect on the soldiers themselves. “Like savages we ate everything there: oats, porridge, jam, honey, coffee. We didn’t give a damn about anything, we’d already been pushed to the limit. Most had spent a month in the fields with no hint of comfort, a shower or normal food. What a wild state you can drive people to by not giving any thought to the fact that they need to sleep, eat and wash.”

So basic, but utterly convincing, and it helps to explain some of the brutality that’s gone on. Guardian articles, of course, don’ change the world, and Filatyev’s revelations will put him at risk without changing Putin’s mind, but it’s still good to have this amount of honesty and detail.

Fiona Hill

Fiona Hill first attracted widespread attention when she appeared as a witness at the first Trump impeachment. Here was this calm, controlled women, clearly intelligent and principled, testifying to Trump’s perversion of power - in a clear Wearside accent.

Her story is remarkable, and now she’s told it, in a magnificent book. “There is nothing for you here” is not a piece of despondent gloom. It’s part memoir, taking as its title what her father said about her future. She took him at his word, went to the States, became a Russian expert, and ended up a senior adviser at the White House. So, a success story about a brilliant solo climb. But it wasn’t, as she’s well aware. It was helped by a number of crucial factors - good luck, personal will power, contacts, smart advice…a complex set of circumstances, which no longer apply.

In Bishop Auckland, the US and Russia she sees the same pattern - the collapse of industry and jobs, the opportunity for populist politicians to exploit the anger and despair of people left behind - even though the promised solutions don’t actually meet the need. Better still, she has a series of proposals about practical steps a range of people could take, depending on their position and circumstances. Analysing carefully, and working together, we could actually change how things look, not just for a lucky few, but for all kids hoping to find a future. Not the sort of book you read every day.

The world of the Daily Express

THANK YOU BORIS…YOU GAVE BRITAIN BACK ITS FREEDOM, the Daily Express announced, when finally forced to recognise that he was going. That’s a standard Brexit myth, far less convincing now than it might have sounded five years ago, but there are still people who believe it.

But how many people believe this: “Reluctantly, but with great dignity, Boris Johnson conceded his tumultuous premiership was finally over…” There was no dignity. Every other witness to these final hours records a Johnson desperate to cling on to power, however irrational or pathetic that seemed.

The show must go on, and if they keep hitting the same familiar notes, somebody out there might believe that they are true: “He will be recognised as the man who took on Putin and saved Britain from the Covid virus, the threat of Marxist rule by Jeremy Corbyn, and continued subjugation to the EU.” How many HNS workers think Johnson saved us from Covid? Corbyn’s rule might have been chaotic - though it could hardly have been more chaotic than Johnson’s - but it wouldn’t have been Marxist. And how many businesses trying to trade with Europe are celebrating the post=-Brexit chaos of our current relationship?

it’s about faith, not reality, as Carole Malone’s column illustrates: “He was a posh boy but he felt like one of us. He was on our side and he wanted what WE wanted, even though we inhabited different worlds.” Yup, that about describes it. A confidence trick, successful for a while.

Writing Poems

I’ve always written poems. I can go back through my archives and find poems from way back, on political events, family celebrations, ballads to celebrate sporting triumphs. But only in retirement has that become the main thing that I do, with a regular output of at least a hundred poems a year. Two a week, every week. It’s ridiculous. Look back through the collected poems of Philip Larkin, and for some years you’ll find only one poem for that year. maybe there’s such a thing as too prolific?

But it’s such a pleasure. the other stuff, reading it to people, entering for competitions, having it published and trying to sell copies, is a different form of activity. But the pleasure of having an idea, working on it, seeing a formal product emerge on what started as blank paper is a constant delight, and when for any reason I don’t spend time doing that, I always find that I miss it.

Not on holiday. Now, when I know I’m going away, I take plenty of paper. I store up ideas, background cuttings, weird little notes which would make no sense to anyone else, because I know there’ll be times when the people I’m with will being going for walks, when I’ll be sitting in a pub, on a bench, or at home, happily scribbling away. So during our week at Saltburn I wrote poems about the Boris Johnson and his ethics adviser, the Rooney girls (that’s Sally and Coleen), and an American odd couple, both called White - a female warder and a male lifer, who had an illicit affair and ran off together. That’s what I call a holiday.

Alternative Views

Notoriously I go on about the virtues of The Guardian, so I’m not surprised when people suggest that maybe I should look to other sources to give myself a wider range of viewpoints. I do this at regular intervals, by buying copies of the Daily Express, the Daily Mail and The Sun when there’s been a significant political event. This week it was the confidence vote in which a substantial number of Conservative MPs decided that actually no, they did not have confidence in the Prime Minister.

I know what I thought about this, but I was still gobsmacked by the way in which the tabloids covered it. Inside their pages, it wasn’t hard to find the view that to a great extent Johnson was the architect of his own downfall, and that both the events of Partygate and his handling of it confirmed that he wasn’t up to the job. But in terms of impact and headline, he morphed into a saintly heroic leader who’d been suddenly and treacherously deceived, by self-serving narcissists who were putting narrow personal considerations ahead of the national interest. My favourite bit was where these Tory rebels (many of whom have been extremely reluctant to commit themselves) are wonderfully compared with Mad Vlad Putin and his taste for bombing civilians. Like they say, you cannot make it up. (But if you really can bear to stand more detail like this, have a look at ‘Tabloid Treachery’ in my Poems from the News. )

The Three Ps

“Poets, Prattlers and Pandemonialists” was always a bit of a mouthful, so we fans refer to them as the Three Ps, a Black Country poetry collective which has enriched our lives. Sunday was the fifth anniversary of “Yes We Cant”, a monthly poetry night which in normal times was held at The Pretty Bricks, Walsall, but has been on Facebook and then Zoom over the past three years.

There’s nothing quite like it. It’s friendly, occasionally raucous and always varied, with a range of poets in style, tone and experience. There’s a deliberate, consistent welcoming and encouragement of newcomers, and a ferociously fair system of rotation which means that open mic slots are not hogged by regulars. There are ten open mic slots (four minutes max, and they keep to it), with a half ender at the end of the first half, and a headliner topping the bill at the end of the night.

Sunday night was special anyway, as we wanted to show our appreciation for what Steve, Emma and Dave have done for us over the last five years, but it was also objectively one of the best poetry nights I can remember - some brilliant new talent, a few familiar faces, and the wonderfully fluent Johnny Fluffypunk (I know, it’s silly; he knows that too, but still) ending the night with a mixture of fantasy, comedy and humane wisdom. We are so lucky.

Poems for Ukraine

During March and April I’ve been busy - writing poems about Ukraine. There is a lot there to write about, and it’s gradually grown into my sort of project - twelve different categories, each with a manilla file in my filing cabinet, so that the growing piles of Guardian cuttings (yes - actual paper! actual scissors!) can each find a home. It doesn’t alter the horrendous natures of the situation, but it’s certainly helped me to cope with it, marking out bits of territory to tackle, one at a time, rather than being swamped by the overpowering gloom.

And then, by a happy accident, I get offered a (last minute - replacing performer who’s ill) substantial slot at a local poetry reading in Ironbridge. Too good to miss. With the co-operation of my excellent local printing firm, I accelerate the printing of my pamphlet (most pomes, I find, end up snugly fitted into a 36-page A5 booklet) and I am good to go.

Judging by response, reaction and sales, I am not alone. One lovely man came up to say “I feel you’ve been looking right in here” (tapping his head). This is a horrendous time, but being together, sharing how it seems and feels, can actually help us to cope. Part of my research has involved listening to the BBC podcast Ukrainecast. It’s certainly not perfect, and there are days when it drives me mad, but no question, it’s created an international community of listeners who are positive and concerned, and wiser for being members of this group. (If you’re interested, there are further details about the poetry booklet on the BOOKS section of this website).

Ezra Klein

Each week I read reviews of podcasts, and wonder if I shouldn’t be more adventurous. This week, I stuck my toe in the water. I’ve been devouring daily doses of Ukrainecast, which has an interesting mixture of political analysis and human interest, though sometimes it drives me wild with oversimplifications, and a rosy endorsement of the Ukrainian stance - “we’re way past compromise”, says Vitaly, superb patriot but maybe suspect as an analyst.

Then I read Miranda Sawyer’s review of The Ezra Klein podcast, courtesy of the New York Times. But it’s not free. Hey, in for a penny…Well, twenty quid, actually, but there’s a year’s subscription and already it looks a bargain. Ezra Klein is very bright, as are the people he talks to. Fiona Hill, Timothy Snyder, Masha Gessen. They come on his show because they know they’ll be treated as adults - probing questions, no phoney outrage or grandstanding. Often they explicitly praise the intelligence of his questions, and he also gives them the time and space to elaborate, develop answers, make connections.

You can tell he’s an intellectual because he ends the show by asking them to recommend books, and they always come up with interesting stuff I’ll maybe try to get from the library. Each episode is around an hour, and is rigorous, demanding listening - a total treat.

Grenfell and the LRB

On of the (many) joys of retirement is the freedom to pursue your own obsessions. Way back in 2018, I wrote a critical commentary on Andrew O’Hagan’s account of Grenfell in the LRB. “Account” is mild - it was a 60,000 word effort, which included graphic descriptions, historical analysis and lots of individual interviews. It also made some controversial judgements which I disputed. O’Hagan thought that the council leaders were motivated by concern for the tenants, and had been unfairly condemned. The local activists, in his eyes, were passionate but misguided, prevented by political bias from constructive negotiation. There’s a lot that’s emerged over the last three years and I could be biased, but I’d say that the vast majority of that evidence supports my side of the case rather than his. In September 2021, for instance, Channel 4 showed footage of a meeting between the council and some tenants, which is dynamite.

But it’s not just about him and me. It’s also about the LRB, this magazine which sees itself as a dominant force in European culture, but which in my view has abdicated all editorial responsibility for a series of journalistic misjudgements which have slandered local citizens and obscured discussion of a significant event. I’ve tried many times and many ways to get the LRB to discuss these issues, but they don’t want to know. If you want to see where I’ve got to, my latest effort on this topic is “the Grenfell Story and the London Review of Books”, on my website at www.paulfranciswrites.co.uk

Sally Rooney

Sally Rooney doesn’t make it easy for herself. She’s already got the obligatory trail of trolls picking ludicrous fights - like the allegation that one of her characters is racist. He is, and he’s picked up on it by another of her characters. Are we now at the point where racism can’t be mentioned? Rooney also uses a translation of an obscure German lyric as her title - “Beautiful World, where are You?” And then, worst of all, one of her characters is a novelist who moans about having to keep picking up awards. Mmm. Must be a real drag, that.

So for jealous writers who are less successful (that’s all writers) Rooney might be irritating, but for readers she remains a delight. I just don’t know any other writer it’s so easy to read - and that’s not because it’s superficial or unadventurous. She does sex and friendship like no-one else, with dialogue that mixes irony and affection that feels to me very much like Jane Austen.

But her characters also do interesting thoughts - on the collapse of civilisation, on plastic, on the state of world politics and - of course - on sex and friendship. With this novel, though, I also notice more moments of thoughtful observation, little epiphanies of description which I don’t remember from the previous two. Having skimmed a couple of hostile reviews, I came to this one prepared to be disappointed, but I’ve loved it.

The Truth and Priti Patel

The day after the Liverpool taxi bombing, Priti Patel did the “responsible minister” act, saying it was too soon to judge and we must let the professionals do their work. Three days later, she got bored with that crap, and told us that’s what we should expect from a failed asylum system. It was left to a senior official to point out that most UK terrorists were born here.

This is a pattern. Patel suggests that it’s our generous habit of putting migrants in hotels which is attracting them to cross the channel. Her officials put the record straight. push factors (losing home and job, threat to life and safety) are far more powerful than pull factors (staying in hotels, scrounging off benefits).

But she’s the perfect minister for Johnson - “Forget about the facts. Just energise the base.” Take her gobsmacking appearance before the home affairs committee, where she describes her position: “I’m an ethnic minority home secretary coming into a department where it didn’t feel that comfortable.” She’s talking about Windrush, and a passing Martian might suppose that she had some fellow feeling with the victims of that scandal, and would make some effort to try to put it right. Think again.

But, like Johnson again, she has ferocious energy. Not for getting stuff done, but for getting herself in the news. I had to work hard to condense my latest poem about her down to five verses, but every bit of the information I covered came from news in the previous month. (See Wonder Woman, in Poems from the News) She just can’t help it.

In praise of rhyme

Always sad to note the death of one of your heroes, but in these horrendous times Stephen Sondheim had a good run for his money, and I’d guess was able to do most of what he wanted to do. For me, he was always a model of how to use rhyme, treating it as a complex craft. You had a mentor, you learned the ropes, and you then spent a lot of time, thought and effort to make sure the result was as good as it could be. Sometimes, it was stunning. Writing the lyrics for “West side Story” wasn’t a bad way to announce yourself, and if you look at the uniform quality allied to variety of tone in “Something’s Coming”, “Officer Krupke” and “America” you can see this was always a special talent.

Mind you, he was lucky. He never had the poetry establishment telling him that rhyme was something to grow out of. Popular songs have always been the dirty secret poets should ignore, the reminder that almost every member of the population is walking around humming words in their head, held there by the power of rhyme.

But now it’s the season to be merry, when we sing Christmas carols and the advertisers look for new ways of making us feel guilty unless we spend a huge amount of money immediately to make our loved ones happy. It’s also, God help us, the moment when those same advertisers feel they have to dress up their slogans with rhymes. They don’t know how they work, they’re tone deaf to scansion, but hey it’s Christmas, so it rhymes. I’ve just listened to three in less than a quarter of an hour, and they were all appalling. Even though he’s hardly had time to settle in, Sondheim must be spinning in his grave.

The Power of Imagery

Last year I wrote a pack for secondary school students, encouraging them to think about the pandemic. It included extracts from Boris Johnson’s speeches. The aim was not to consider his political judgement or personal honesty, but to focus on the images he employed, and the ways in which those might work on the reader.

I was reminded of that this week, idly glancing through extracts from Jennifer Arcuri’s diary, where she faithfully records the alternating aggression and faux modesty of his chat-up line: “How can I be the thrust - the throttle - your mere footstep as you make your career?”

Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star rebelling against years of abuse by an older, much more powerful man, offers a very different tone: “Even if it’s just striking a stone with a pebble, or a moth attacking a flame, I will tell the truth about you.”

Finally, while many of us were expecting Johnson to lie through his teeth as soon as he became Prime Minister, to some loyalist Conservatives this has come as an unpleasant surprise. But few of them have expressed it with the delicacy of Huw Merriman, chair of the transport committee:

“This is the danger of selling perpetual sunlight and then leaving it to others to explain the arrival of moonlight.”

They

As a book title, that sounds a bit bleak and clumsy. But it’s totally appropriate, and the book it describes is just brilliant. I’d enjoyed Sarfraz Manzor’s journalism, and his memoir about growing up in Luton and having his life redeemed by Bruce Springsteen, later filmed as Blinded by the Light. So I was going to read this anyway, but I’m rapidly thinking it’s the best book I’ve read this year.

The subtitle is “What Muslims and Non-Muslims Get Wrong About Each Other”, and it does bring clarity to a range of misunderstanding, but not in a superior, condescending way. He talks to a wide range of witnesses, working hard to understand them and present their views sympathetically, but he’s also deeply honest about his own misunderstandings and mistakes, and his own journey as a son and lover, husband and father. He doesn’t shy away from grim facts or difficult issues, but he does confront them in a fresh, constructive manner, and for me the overall impact of reading this book was encouraging and inspirational.

Political Poems

Most of my life I’ve written political poems, whether or not they were wanted. Within the poetry world it was pretty clear that they weren’t, for quite a long tome. Poets stayed above that kinds of stuff, didn’t soil their hands with commitments or points of view - except for odd eccentrics lke Blake, Shelley or Adrian Mitchell. 9/11 changed that a bit, with the War on Terror eating into a lot of lives that didn’t think they had any connection with politics. Then austerity and Brexit convinced a widening audience that actually, poetry might engage with this stuff.

So imagine my delight when Marvin Thompson arrived as guest editor at Poetry Wales. As a Black, Welsh-speaking teacher he’s not exactly standard issue poet, and nor was his pitch. “Send me your villanelles,” he said. “Write me something about Cop 26.” Wow. I’ve always written villanelles, and sestina, and hundreds of sonnets, even while most poets were saying - “Mmm, still using regular forms. That’s quaint.” so here’s the winner of the National Poetry competition urging me to write a villanelle about Cop 26. Who could refuse?

I did write it - and you can find it elsewhere on this website (Conference Call, in “Poems on the News” but the dream is over. Marin has gone, pleading overwork, and so far as I’m concerned his successors don’t want to know about villanelles or Cop 26, let alone a poem that combines the two.