An Information 2

Booked

A fascinating sampler of recent Austrian poetry: The Night Begins with a Question: XXV Austrian Poems 1978-2002, edited by Iain Galbraith (Scottish Poetry Library), which could be twinned with Margitt Lehbert’s translations of The Poems of Georg Trakl (Anvil). As Tony Frazer has said, the Austrian mainstream seems nearly as experimental as other countries’ avant-gardes. Trakl was a poet of the early decades of the 20th century whose poems are inhabited by a kind of illuminated or stained glass medieval noir, sinister monks and stylised landscapes with ripe pinpoints of colour.

Plantarchy edited by JUStin!katKO is a magazine that collects a great range of contemporary work within various traditions of the avant-garde, with a particular interest in (or, understandably, impact of) visual text (Jeff Hansen, Geof Huth, Aaren Yandrich, Camille PB and others). Also good to have, in issue 2, Keith Tuma’s reflection on Anglo/Scottish/ American avant-gardes of the last forty or so years. A very interesting magazine indeed, although the dayglo Blast-ish bright pink of the covers might cause a radioactive incident. See: plantarchy.us (no www prefix) for more details (as well as for information on the related Critical Documents series). Two new books from Perdika Press: N by Nicholas Potamitis, “having abandoned alexandrines / for a thing less overdetermined left instead / to clinicians to vaunt the value of such”… and Adam Simmonds’ Ganymede, “who wanders the mystery / as the world downloads all”. More information at perdikapress.com. Issue 8 of Lamport Court is edited by Chris McCabe and includes poems by David Miller, Simon Smith, Frances Presley, William Allen and many others (including one Richard Price, coexistent with the current writer).

Gordon Jarvie’s The Tale of the Crail Whale and other poems (Harpercroft), illustrated by Hilke MacIntyre is a modest unassuming short collection of poems largely about sea creatures and has a pleasing deliberately naïve design. Hamish Whyte’s new (tall!) collection, Window on the Garden, delicately produced by Essence Press (www.essence.co.uk) with a birchtree pattern cover by Morven Gregor, has the quietly observant modernism of Schuyler and Williams at the window; the nature notes are also registering the nature of perception. Don Paterson (through a W. N. Herbert prism?), Paul Muldoon, Geoffrey Hill, J. H. Prynne and John Ashbery are the targets in the (affectionate?) parodies of Other Men’s Flowers by “Ron Paste”, issued by landfillpress.co. uk. I especially like the dusty professorial stress punctuation in the Hill piece and the shrieky collage in the acolyte-of-Prynne. Also from Landfill, I haven’t been anywhere, man by Linh Dinh: In “My Local Burning”: “If it feels and looks like racing, / And crashes, hallelujah, like racing, / Then it’s World War III all right,”or, in “Too Late Late Capitalism”: “Addendum: this farmers’ market’s a chain. / The ships are gone, the chowder remains.” || Hazel Frew’s debut collection Clockwork Scorpion (Rack Press): poems which are wry and contemplative at the same time. In this universe constellations become comfort food and romantic dinner exists on the fine line between friendship and love. Strong visual images – a baby in foil in a pocket, a comet “projecting a dusty beam / at the earth’s cinema” – disconnect, reconnect, fascinate. This is poetry gradually, carefully, reflectively opening “the serrated lid / on a new country,” a pleasurable, memorable poetry. More info at: www.nicholas murray.co.uk/RackPress.html.

Alexander Hutchison’s Carbon Atom: charms, incantations, classic satire, contemplation, bawdiness – rumbustious here, elegiac there – poetry of range and depth. Watch out for a Salt book later this year and for Andrew Duncan interviewing him in Don’t Start Me Talking (also Salt). Carbon Atom is published by Link-Light, 47 Camphill Avenue, Langside, Glasgow, G41 3AX. Penelope Shuttle’s Redgrove’s Wife (Bloodaxe) collects the first poems after several years silence following the death of Shuttle’s husband Peter Redgrove (and the death of her father at about the same time). Shuttle’s poetry is both sophisticated, in the sense of the rich vocabulary of material culture it deploys, and primal, demonstrating that list and near-spell like forms (among others) still have immense power in them if they can be renewed with this kind of vigour. Here the risk of me-me-me in elegies is beautifully refracted and tenderness, respect, admiration captured in the dazzle and re-orientation. This is a very fine collection indeed. Edwin Morgan’s A Book of Lives (Carcanet) collects the sequence "Love and Life" in the Cathures stanza he has invented, with its interesting formal cross between improvisation and disciplined pattern; occasional poems; several political pieces; a brief history of the world, no less; and a dialogue between a cancerous cell and a healthy one. “Never ask, never find” is the motto and warning of the book and there is a strong and moving sense (for me) of Morgan entreating his readers not to shut the doors he has more than helped open and managed to keep open: “if it’s dark – still speak true.”

Poems old and new in the latest issue of Duncan Glen’s Zed20 (reprinting a poem by Amy Lowell and a song by Aphra Behn; new work by Gordon Jarvie, Jennie Daiches and many others; translations from the German of Nelly Sachs , the Gaelic of Rob Donn Mackay and the Hungarian of Lajos Aprily; and interesting commentary on modern typography. Contact: Akros Publications, 33 Lady Nairn Ave., Kirkcaldy KY1 2AW. The Californian The New Review of Literature (Vol. 4 no. 1) collects new poetry by Ray DiPalma, Catherine Wagner, John Kinsella, Leslie Scalapino and one of the last poems by the late Barbara Guest. Simon Smith guest-edits a British feature, which includes translations by Tim Atkins and Charles Bainbridge, a remarkable cross-threading of Gilgamesh and the first days of the Gulf War in Andrea Brady's "from Sweatbox", Kelvin Corcoran - "I walk out of the dream, the war on abstract nouns", Andrew Duncan, Harry Gilonis, Chris McCabe, Anthony Mellors, David Rees, Fiona Sampson, Catherine Simmonds, and Matthew Welton; oh, and Richard Price. More information at nrl@otis.edu . Is there a link between Robin Fulton’s distinctive way of being surprised by the person in his poem who turns out to be him and Rae Armantrout, whose Next Life (Wesleyan University Press) records “Someone insists on forming sentences / on my pillow / when all I want is sleep”? In certain points of tone, yes, though Armantrout’s very short lines and leaner drawing of the scene, suggest distance, too. In any case this is a quizzical sometimes funny philosophical collection of poems concerned with, among other things, the tyranny of taking in information (and so obliterating other): “Anything cancels / everything out”.

It’s A Record

Etran Finatawa's debut Introducing (World Music Network) crosses two quite distinct cultural groups from Niger (the Tuareg speak Tamashek, one of the ancient Berber languages of northern Africa and the Wodaabe speak Fulkulde, a language of West Africa). They have in common a nomadic life and here fuse and complement their music: electric guitar that can sound exhilaratingly urban (reminds me of a fast version of what I think is Chicago blues), local instruments (tendé, calabash) and the Wodaabe members' polyphonic singing. We saw them at Womad 2006 in Reading (sadly, the last to be held within reach of a railway station now it’s moving to Malmesbury) and, especially live, they receive the Katie Price Vigorous Wave Award for exciting music. Some translations of Bammo Agonla's lyrics: "Hello miss / How are you in the morning? / How are you in the afternoon? / And in the evening?" And: "You want to know what I think of you? / You are even more beautiful than a cloud." || The songs on Real Life, the first album from Joan Wasser's new band Joan as Police Woman are often as if by an older or more experienced woman (a police woman in that sense, perhaps) encouraging a younger lover to dare in love and Life in General. Now and again there are harmonies, sometimes very deep, and these and some whispered backing singing surprise and tingle. The lyrics though occasionally exotic ("the birds of prey are mating") tend to be tightly limited to a direct address to the person who is being gently led into risk / love / celebration ("The Ride") and even self-celebration ("Eternal Flame"). Although "Christobel" drives a Patti Smith cry of near exultation, only this time it's frustration, across the piece the voice is one who is authoritative in love, who can encourage through experience but knows enough not to smother. The singing is piano-led in places (is there even a European lieder undertow to this Brooklyn record?). There are also muted brass and other jazz effects. The voice is warm, slow, exquisite, with the control of enjoyed languor (only Antony of Antony and the Johnsons, who makes an appearance, sounds suitably and uncontrollably adulatory).

Amy Winehouse may have crossed under the flightpath of Joan as Policewoman, in the other direction, because this record, Back to Black, has strong American sounds. It's another English classy retro-excavation of the late 50s and early 60s, that period offering up aural ore here in the shape of, say, Dinah Washington and Barbara George, but with a more explicit vocabulary as the singer deals with alcohol addiction and concurrent boyfriends. Just because it’s number one doesn’t make this a bad record; far from it in this case; “My Tears Dry on Their Own” a particularly exciting track (how does it seem to be so breathless, fast, but so sophisticatedly assured, undeceived; remarkable). There’s a spectral quality to the first LP from The Good, The Bad, and the Queen: perhaps the title of the band is not so much a joke as a reference to the ghostlike Man With No Name americana of the spaghetti Westerns (note the Clint Eastwood reference in Gorillaz, and the Magnificent Seven cowboy-love of The Clash); it’s mixed up with the (southern) Albion-search that goes back to the Kinks and flickers in Blur, the Libertines and Babyshambles. Maybe the plaintive Ray Davies tones that Damon Albarn evokes are part of that elegiac mood, too. For me, it’s too spectral – it doesn’t have the guts of Blur’s Think Tank, its percussive test-department surprises and Specials shouts, the delicate eclecticism, nor the tenderness – but the occasional dub-reggae effects are OK if under-done and the condemnation of contemporary England eloquent; it’s a good start but never breaks into a run. The Fall’s TLC Post-Reformation finds Mark E. Smith as gleefully puritanical as ever (perhaps enjoying the gothic squalor so he can then denounce it), and the near-title track, “Reformation”, manages to tarmacadam itself with a German techno-headache melted in with (can this be intentional?) the throbbing drive for the county border on Springsteen’s Nebraska. Smith hollers “Cheese State!” (“Cheese State-uh”, with that extra syllable he has) over the freeway/autobahn imperative and you, I mean I, can’t help join in-uh.

Ballads of the Book, a various artists album of new work (Scottish writers' lyrics set and performed by Scottish musicians) includes words by John Burnside, Bill Duncan, Rody Gorman, Alasdair Gray, Ian Rankin, A. L. Kennedy, Robin Robertson, Hal Duncan, Ali Smith, Laura Hird, Louise Welch and others (see www.chemikal.co.uk). The superconcentrate of lyrical content in quite a few of the texts can push things a little beyond the baggage allowance for musical take-off - Edwin Morgan's simple "The Good Years" an exception – but it’s a very good beginning for writers' collaboration with popular culture. Alan Bissett's clunky voice-over on his collaboration with Malcolm Middleton, the glistening dance track "The Rebel On His Own Tonight", despite the charge and wit of the poetry mars one of the highlights of this record - but this is an album of interest, sung largely in Scottish rather than transatlantic accents. The folk tunings of many of the tracks are earnest but they also give what could be a very disparate album a satisfying cohesion. Darren Hayman's Table For One: The Dessert Menu, collects five new tracks from the Table sessions (see www.hefnet.com) with Hayman's sensitivity to local England's breathtaking changes under late capitalism well demonstrated, and there's more than a fair share of eroticised commodity-fetishes ("Short Skirt On"; "She Wants to Be A Cowgirl"). Keyboards are in more of a backseat and guitars are back, as they were in his recent show at the 100 Club with the hastily convened "Darren Hayman and the Secondary Modern" - an assured and warm performance and a winning flutter through both the Hayman back-catalogue and what I hope is the next album.

All texts unless otherwise stated are © Richard Price