Next

January feels like a good time to resurrect this blog. I have nearly finished setting two new Oystercatchers, one by Nancy Gaffield & one by Jeremy Noel-Tod. The latter is a tribute to Roger Langley as we approach the third anniversary of his death. I am also looking forward to the publication of my versions of Petrarch's complete sonnets. This chunky (for me) volume should be out from Reality Street in late January 2015.

I have also been getting on with my versions of all Cavalcanti's poems. Here's a recent sample. 

Future posts will bring more detailed news of new Oystercatcher publications, as well as a few thoughts on work I have enjoyed reading over recent months.

But that's enough for this one. I need to get back into training for this lark.

Cavalcanty 12

Perché non fuoro a me gli occhi dispenti

sending coded postcards to my lady

of awkward compartmentalisations

now that her pole-dancing days are over

& her interest in art has begun

here’s one of me & S. Sebastian

& here’s one of my cock in the bocca

della verità & this is the end

of yet another phase of hopelessness

not that it hasn’t had its miracles

its commas of starlight in the wine glass

the morning moving down her naked back

her fists full of my ordinary hair

I devote the rest of my life to these
bucatini all’amatriciana

Simon Marsh & Rebecca Forster

Ping₂

these browns

these hues you use

the rumpus in your heart

media rust replaces

paste in Redon blues

dawn’s tongues of brazen light

turn after-flare impending cloud

your shield’s edge etched

with cumin dust

a still lens map pin clipped

aren’t you flummoxed by

the cute way stars

stay shackled fast

to night?

Simon Marsh has been an enthusiastic, skillful & enabling collaborator for many years, mainly in the context of musical performance. Much of his recent music has been created with the Milan-based band Place. In the field of poetry, my own collaborations with Simon resulted in The Pistol Tree Poems (Shearsman, 2011). His poetry also includes Bar Magenta (Many Press), The Ice Glossaries (Poetical Histories)  & The Vinyl Hat Years (Tack/Many Press). Born in 1960, Simon grew up in Kent and moved to Milan in 1984. In 2008, he moved to the village of Valverde in the Oltrepò Pavese, and then to Varzi, where he now lives. Recently he has been involved in a fascinating collaboration - entitled Ping - with the artist Rebecca Forster. 

Rebecca was born in 1960 in St.Albans, England, & specialized in sculpture at the Norwich School of Art. Her work is inspired by archaeology, literature, maps & plans, amongst other things, & is expressed in drawings and sculptures made in paper, and in etched and beaten zinc or brass. From pencils to spray-paint, from ceramics to murals and artist’s books, her work reflects the countries she has lived in and the cities she has explored – from Cyprus, Greece and Italy, to New York, Piacenza, Verona, Zurich & Milan.

The images & poems so far generated for the Ping project are each of substantial interest & value in themselves. But it is in the ongoing process, & the shifting interrelationships between the various visual images & texts that the magic of the series really lies. The textures, lines, colours & image-associations flicker backwards & forwards between picture & poem, revealing & refracting aspects of collaborative creativity that never settle into a fixed or final formation.

So far there are 6 pictures & 6 poems. It's good to know that more are on their way, & also that the first group will be appearing soon in an online magazine. It seems to me that the series would make an extremely handsome book. I wonder if there are any interested publishers out there.

Cavalcanty I

This new blog, which will concern itself with poetry, & be highly irregular, kicks off with another recent project. After finishing my versions of Petrarch's sonnets in October 2013, I am now turning my attention to Guido Cavalcanti. 

Cavalcanty

Sonnet I

contains additional material

for reading groups & cartons of ashes

so go diminutive autoscopy

fast rewind to the start of the tunnel

beyond departments of psychophysics

& the carbonized traces of tinder

she drove through my hedge & into the lounge

creating this derelict extension

interspersed with irregular sections

rafters & yells trashed plasterboard & stars

runes slashed in human hide & toxic air

made inexplicably invisible

to most members of the neighbourhood watch

she shone among the ex-pats of Rapallo

John Forbes' Knacks

I've been thinking about John Forbes. John died in 1998, aged 47. I met him in Cambridge & we had a couple of drinks. I found an old pamphlet of his which had fallen down the back of the bookshelf. I hate to think that I haven't read him for ages. Maybe I can make up for that by mentioning him here. He had a knack for coming up with brilliant titles, followed by brilliant poems. For example: Ode to Tropical Skiing, The Stunned Mullet, Four Heads & how to do them, Muddy Waters Relaxing Between Gigs, Police Elegy, Rocket to Rome (Homage to the Ramones), Self-portrait with cake, and Warm Snipers. Here's a poem of his from that dusty pamphlet - HUMIDITY (Equipage, 1998).


Satori in Viterbo

                          'Ken Bolton's approach to poetry

                          makes any theory of performance

                          collapse and all serious critical

                          analysis impossible'

                                                Dorothy Green

Let’s make a theory of performance

                                                       collapse!

                                           Pegged out on the road,

too old in our T shirts & jeans

too young in our suburban respect... ‘Hey, that’s Art!’

‘Non respirare’ the Italian

X-ray technician sang

& ‘Don’ breathe’ the wardsman

whose brother lived in Melbourne

repeated like a chant

                                         & I didn’t

stunned by the mountains

I could see out the window EXACTLY LIKE

the ones they told us were ‘only schematic’

in early Renaissance painting.

                                                         That’s when I knew

ALL ART IS LITERALLY TRUE

& all serious critical analysis

has the status of a dumped Mini Cooper

pushed out of the bus

in the penultimate triumphal scene

of Michael Caine & Noel Coward's 

THE ITALIAN JOB, smashing down the precipice

& bursting into flames,

finally coming to rest in the snow

thousands of feet below.

John James Midwinter Songs

It's always a great pleasure to see new work by John James. His latest publication is Songs in Midwinter For Franco, & comes from Equipage. You can get it from Rod Mengham at Jesus College, Cambridge CB5 8BL for £4.50 (inc. UK postage) & I don't know why you wouldn't. John spends quite a lot of time down in the south of France these days, tending a few vines & sampling local productions. One of his local productions includes these lines:

tonight the moon
is full & large & low

& none shall sleep
though all is silent

not a word spoken all
invisible midnight love

clouds disappear
the stars arrive

each of us
a very particular case

so lightly we
dance together

which really have to be read in the context of the whole pamphlet, so you know what to do next.