An Information 1 (from Painted, Spoken)

Booked

In Tom Leonard's Being a Human Being and other poems from Object Permanence there are lean, probing registers, some forms of discourse being brought up against their own 'translation' ("statehood is right to arms / statehood is control of the air"). "Wish You Were Here" is a pulsing set of short worked commentaries on holidaymaking; "The Proxy Badge of Victimhood" a polemic of considerable power. Elizabeth Burns, Jim Carruth, Alexander Hutchison and others appear in Duncan Glen's Zed2OM Summer 2006 issue. Also from Akros, Glen's Small Press Publishers of Scotland: Idealists & Romantics 1922-2006 documents the little press scene in a readable attractively designed history and reference work.

Michael Kindellan and Reitha Pattison each translate/transform eight troubadour poems from Bertrand de Born (d.1215) in a quietly but beautifully produced new pamphlet, Word is Born, from Arehouse Press. The poem-with-art, art-with-poem series Tolling Elves edited by Thomas Evans, surely one of the great little magazine series of recent years, has come to an end, but copies may still be available: at least you can see the covers at one edit where you can also glean contact details. David Miller’s Kater Murr Press is an earlier similar excellent enterprise that is still very much going and has digitised its art and poetry. Contributors include Alyson Torns, Giles Goodland, Natalie d’Arbeloff, Johan de Wit and many others.

J. H. Prynne's To Pollen is a work of stilled compressed anguish and, as with Leonard's book, state terrorism appears to be the primary theme. Barque also issue the space / physics / environmental theory poetry of Allen Fisher in Singularity Stereo and Ian Hunt's Green Light, in which reference is made to Daisy Goodwin's Little Book of Command Structure and the reader is invited to "Go deeper into the beck and call, and even vigilance willl administer itself strange spaces: the railway lands, the zone of embroideries, the small brown birds of the inter-war years."

About eight years after starting it a certain Richard Price and David Miller finally publish their British Poetry Magazines 1914-2000 (British Library): hundreds of accounts of magazines, a union catalogue, historical commentaries, and extensive author index. The first number of Sudeep Sen's stylish Atlas includes work by Charles Bernstein, Les Murray, R Raj Rad, Stephen Watts, Tishani Doshi, Fiona Sampson, John Welch, and many others (info atatlasaarkarts@gmail.com). Lastly, there's Catherine Wagner's songish, philosophicalish, painful mother /wife/occupier-of-alive-cells book Macular Hole from Fence from a few years ago, but yours truly is a lifelong learner and have you read it yet? If you ever have the chance to see/hear Wagner read then book that plane / ferry / spaceshuttle tootsweet (I did recently at a remarkable reading by Wagner, co-billed with Leslie Scalapino, and both offering a lot structurally and aurally to think about).

It’s A Record

Bob Dylan crosses Time Out of Mind with Love and Theft and good oldfashioned Modern Times is the boogiewoogie result. Precisely who did hit him over the head in the mystic garden? - anyway, it got results. British Sea Power clear away the noise from their first Long Player, clarify the melodies, and Open Season is a witty janglefest. Gnarls Barkley's St Elsewhere conjures a Was Not Was style synthetic-but/so-real-soul record; wonderful singing as the duo belt through and bend soul genres; there's even a Grandmaster Flash manic laugh at one point, but was one track's plasticky electronica and another's necrophilia really necessary? Oh, probably. Joanna Newsom's The Milk-Eyed Mender - cranky quirky loquacious Emily Dickinson with highpitched oomph, piano and something that sounds like a heavenly harp; homespun divine!. Coarser at times (yes "surprised by the language") than Dear Catastrophe Waitress, Belle and Sebastian's The Life Pursuit: are they projecting back to sounds that never existed but should have?). Midges that die so that others might love! Beautiful trumpet addressed to the "nearly made-it" of "Dress up in you"! Steely Dan-ish (early period) guitar! A song's letter told as it's written! I'm reduced to exclamations! The lyrical fluency, articulacy, wrongfootingness: back from the pony derby, I hang my poetry spurs up and sob.

Paragraph. Is Sheffield modernising the Fifties for everybody? Arctic Monkeys dust George Formby down, plug him in to an electric guitar, drum him up, and give us all Liberal Studies advice that still sounds almost 'cool' (as I believe the youngsters call it). Then Richard Hawley's Coles Corner conjures Buddy Holly, Johnny Cash, even Hank Williams (in tone and song-construction) and I'm absolutely happy to listen to the tender retrofuture. Meanwhile his old mate from Pulp, Jarvis Cocker provides lyrical input to Charlotte Gainsbourg's 5:55 a dark, tense, temptation of a pop record floating on Air. Cue ingenious Francophilic link. Well The French didn't last long (the band, not the nation) but when Darren Hayman goes solo he sounds more like the band he was in before that. Table for One is pleasingly Hefnerish (though it also shows what a tight sound The French's Local Information had). "Caravan Song" has English 'trailertrash' staying mournfully at home, a song for stray dogs is sung absolutely sincerely (no, reallly), and "That's Not What She's Like" continues Hayman's word/ wired/ weird dance along the man-woman divide, crooning about on the man side of what he maybe sees as the wall. Perhaps his thirst for knowledge will only be satisfied if he's reincarnated as a woman (will it be like he thinks?), but until then it's a pleasure to hear the negotiations, if at times a little disconcerting. Sadly, the Hefner double-album compilation of out-takes and other rarities, Cat Fight, doesn’t really add up (unlike the earlier, more modest Boxing Hefner which is a honed, coherent, compilation), especially as a fair chunk in this retrospective is re-engineered work from tracks that became Local Information, but last half (the earliest material) has more than curiosity value.

Another paragraph. And one last mention to Cat Power’s The Greatest – afraid I’m going to use the word “haunting” – think the timbre of Dusty Springfield or possibly the vocalist used on the single "Rapture" from Iio - yes, haunting voice of Chan Marshall with a strong, rousing Memphis back-up band (this Cat Power’s Memphis to Dusty’s?).

Mainstream Roundup: Unfortunately there is not enough space for a Mainstream Roundup.

All texts unless otherwise stated are © Richard Price