Larkin at the Poetry Archive

The wonderful Poetry Archive, a collection of audio recordings of poets reading their own work, has recently been updated with some Philip Larkin - The Whitsun Weddings, Mr. Bleaney and The Trees (here). The Whitsun Weddings was recently voted the 'nation's favorite poem' and Larkin their favorite poet. Here, I duly - proudly - announce myself as one of the great, teeming, sweaty, brutish mass.

I've now heard six recordings of Larkin reading his poetry (the three now up at the archive; Aubade, Love Songs in Age and, last year on radio 3, a live recording of The Whitsun Weddings). Such is Larkin's voice and style that the recordings resonate through each rereading of the poems. As the archive posits in their introduction, "Hearing a poet reading his or her work remains uniquely illuminating. It helps us to understand the work as well as helping us to enjoy it." Yes, always illuminating. But no, not necessarily enjoyable. Thankfully, with these recordings it is both.

Larkin rarely gave readings. Some have postulated it was because of his stammer, but in an interview with the Paris Review*, he gave the decision some intellectual justification:

"Hearing a poem, as opposed to reading it on the page, means you miss so much- the shape, the punctuation, the italics, even knowing how far you are from the end. Reading it on the page means you can go your own pace, taking it in properly; hearing it means you're dragged along at the speaker's own rate, missing things, not taking it in, confusing there and their and things like that..."

First: Yes, but only when the poem is previously unread. So read the poems first. Second: After listening, read them again. That I agree with Larkin does not mean I will stop reading, - or, when I've remembered a poem enough to only half forget it, "reciting" - Larkin's work at those too close to me to leave. As you can't prevent this, perhaps best to have the poems in mind. It will, as Larkin's work is apt to do in so many other areas, ease your pain.

*Page 8.

"ME BIG CHIEF ELIZABETH"

That was the headline, glanced over the shoulder of a businessman, of a report in the Daily Mail on the Queen's recent meeting with Bruce "Two Dogs" Bozsum, leader of the Mohegan tribe of American Indians. The report was on page five. Isn't it an awful jolt to be reminded that the front page of the Daily Mail is only the first page of the Daily Mail?

"A comedian, she said, should be the sort of person, she said, that as soon as you look at them, she said, it makes you wanna laugh, she said..."

"A montage of hilarious features" - BBC

Above is the 'perfect comedy face', a blend of "179 facial aspects of 20 top comedians" created by scientists at the University of Stirling. They use it to argue that feminine features - a wide face, large eyes and softfeatures" are "the features most likely to mark male comedians out for success," as they imply a friendly, agreeable and cooperative nature. (BBC)

It would be quite interesting to see whether the same could be said for alternative comics, or those whose act is more confrontational; or whether the reverse is true for female comics (though finding the top 20 may be rather a difficult task). I'm drawing a blank when coming up with names, mainly because conducting the research with nothing more to go on than "wide face, large eyes and soft features", with no research team around you, is a decidely fluffy exercise.

It reminds me somewhat of this bit from Stewart Lee, here.

Murder of Anna Politkovskaya

This year's Edinburgh International Book Festival featured a series of afternoon readings put on by Amnesty International, showcasing the work of authors who have been, in one way or another, censored. Some of the featured authors had had their works banned; some had been imprisoned. Others were so irrepressible that the only effective form of censorship was murder.

Yesterday, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian investigative journalist, was found shot dead. Initial reports suggest a contract killing. It was in Edinburgh last year that I found her book, Putin's Russia, a chronicle of absolutely horrific abuses of power and rights that, because to endenic corruption in the military, government, business and judiciary, go unreported and unpunished in modern Russia. The one source of optimism in the book was that, in Politkovskaya, the victims of the abuses had such a brave, articulate and honest advocate.

Reports on her death can be found here, here and here. The Guardian have posted one of her articles on Chechnya here and an interview with her here.

Make the time to read them.

National Poetry Day

Today is National Poetry Day, and this year's theme is Identity. Given its focus on finding one's 'proper ground', I think the following choice is justified. The first stanza is also quite pertinent to me at the moment as I'm currently longing to escape the family home and am looking for a new place to live with nowhere really standing out, every place having its faults.

Places, Loved Ones
By Philip Larkin

No, I have never found
The place where I could say
This is my proper ground,
Here I shall stay;
Nor met that special one
Who has an instant claim on everything I own
Down to my name;

To find such seems to prove
You want no choice in where
To build, or whom to love;
You ask them to bear
You off irrevocably,
So that its not your fault
Should the town turn dreary,
The girl a dolt.

Yet, having missed them, you're
Bound, none the less, to act
As if what you settled for
Mashed you, in fact;
And wise to keep away
From thinking you still might trace
Uncalled-for to this day
Your person, your place.

Three months after “Places, Loved Ones” was published, Larkin arrived in Hull, where he was to remain until the end of his life.

Branding Guff

From the latest issue of Private Eye:



Dave C does seem a thoroughly nice chap, though. He even left the stage following his big speech to the Conservative Party conference to the Killers! Even I'm not hip enough for them.

Stewart Lee on Little Atoms

Stewart Lee, one of my favorite comedians , was on the excellent Little Atoms radio show a couple of weeks ago and the MP3 of the (hour long) interview has now been uploaded. It can be downloaded here.

Lee was the co-writer and director of Jerry Springer The Opera and so the interview touches on the topics of free-speech, offense, blasphemy and the idiocies of the religious right. As with most Lee interviews, it's both extremely entertaining and thought provoking. An excellent way to spend an hour.

Cracker

Turning over to ITV for Cracker last night was rather like going to a UGC to see a foreign language film. Just as the lack of Hollywood explosions sits uncomfortably with the popcorn and 2-litre tubs of Coke, so monologues about 9/11 jar with commercial breaks featuring Martin Kemp advertising the latest sale at DFS.

If you've not seen it or heard of it before, Cracker revolves around the drinking, smoking, gambling, flabby all 'round maverick Dr. Edward 'Fitz' Fitzgerald (played by Robbie Coltrane), a criminal psychologist - the best in his field - who aides Manchester police in murder enquiries. Yes, this set up all sounds very gittish and silly, but - as Christopher Eccleston, a former cast member - has put it, the series is like a Trojan Horse: it is a powerful issue-based drama series masquerading as a police-drama. The crime-drama is merely a hook in which to deal with rape, homophobia, racism, and - in last night's case - American foreign policy and Iraq.

The issues dominated last night's episode more than ever before (I think it's only slightly fatuous to say that Iraq and Tony Blair, culled from news footage, had as much screen time as Coltrane.) The plot (a flimsy, convoluted story about an ex-servicemen killing Americans) seemed an afterthought to the actual debates going on within the story. It was powerful and thought provoking, a type of programming recently anathema to ITV (This is the channel who recently spent £12m on "Love Island." More than was spent on the new series of Doctor Who).

In addition to being critically acclaimed, the episode was a ratings success. I do hope it will prove to ITV that they can make such programming and prosper, the result can only be good for everyone.

Obvious Jokes

On Friday nights millions of people, including myself, avoid Channel Four television like the plague. You might even be one of us. For the mere thought, let alone sight or sound, of its flagship 'comedy' programme is enough to set off in us a frenzy of nihilistic suicide impulse. This programme is, of course, The Friday Night Project, presented by the dire Justin Lee Collins and his sidekick Alan Carr. It is comedy for Big Brother fans, too lazy to switch over; television for fans of tripe from Jordan and Fightstar.

And so, it is with interest that I come across this news story on BBC online. As they were completing the filming of a new TV series, Lionel Blair and Alan Carr came across a man attempting suicide by leaping off Blackpool Pier. "By the time the entertainers reached the end of the pier," according to the BBC, "the man was holding on by his fingertips, but they managed to grab him."

They told him: 'Come on, you don't want to die. You can't do that. Listen to us'. And the reaction of this man to his miraculous divine intervention, given a second chance that so few in his tragic position recieve - his cry for help answered at the last possible moment?

"He did a double take, but then said, 'No I want to go'." Quite.

But he wasn't getting away that easily: " So I [Blair] got one arm and you [Carr] got the other." The man is now back at home with his family, where, one assumes, his previous problems will fade into insignificance when the night terrors featuring Carr and Blair begin. Perhaps he will rethink his life; lead a life of utter moral purity for fear that does he leave this world, the faces of Carr and Blair will meet with him again.

"news".bbc.co.uk: "Scots Tory logo 'less to right'"

Scots Tory logo 'less to right'

The Scottish logo (left) is bigger and leans less to the right

The Scottish Conservatives have unveiled their version of the party's new tree logo.

It is bigger than the English version, slightly darker - and the trunk does not lean as far to the right.

The Scottish logo was circulated without comment and the party declined to discuss whether the differences had any political significance.

When the logo was unveiled in England, one activist said it looked like it had been scribbled by a three-year-old.

Designers were paid £40,000 to replace the traditional torch emblem with an image representing "strength, endurance, renewal and growth".

Former Tory minister Lord Tebbit said it looked like "a bunch of broccoli".

An SNP spokesman said: "Scottish voters won't be fooled by a slightly less right leaning tree."

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/5362434.stm

Stephen Fry

In 1995, following a breakdown and suicide attempt, Stephen Fry was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. He had no idea what the term meant, never having heard the it before. Tonight, he presents the first of two programmes exploring his condition. There are preview clips here.

When younger, I never really liked Stephen Fry (mainly fear: he can be very intimidating as Melchett). As I grew older, with only a few vague memories of A Bit of Fry and Laurie and those performances in Blackadder, I could never understand why he was so lauded (as Dead Ringers put it, 'Stephen Fry: The stupid man's thinking man.'). Then, a few years ago, on hearing a recording of him discussing religion with Christopher Hitchens (and later, seeing The Hedge Sketch), I became a convert, when at the end of a wonderful hour and a half debate (nee conversation) on the various idiocies of religion, Fry's eloquence, erudition and wit came together in a beautiful summation of Humanism:

“I think it’s fair to say that almost every failure of humanity is the failure of imagination to some extent, the failure to penetrate the minds of others. [There was a line of GK Chesterton’s that] the trouble with atheism, as far as he was concerned, was that the trouble was that when you stopped believing in God you don’t believe in nothing, you believe in anything. Perhaps we do live in a culture where reason’s not glorified … however, I don’t think we should allow religion the trick of remaining that the spiritual and the beautiful and the noble and the altruistic and the morally strong and the virtuous are in any way inventions of religion, or particular or peculiar to religion. It’s certainly true that you could say the Christ who said, ‘Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,’ that’s a wonderful thing to have said, and anyone who said that would win a great deal respect and interest, it’s one of the most beautiful phrases ever uttered, but there is no, absolutely no, monopoly on beauty and truth in religion. And I suppose one of the reasons that I am so fond of the Greeks, and one of the reasons that the great radical and poet Shelley wrote his Prometheus Unbound is because he understood that if you were to compare the Genesis myth which had bedevilled our culture, the Western European culture, for a very long time indeed, for two-thousand years, it was essentially a myth in which we should be ashamed of ourselves. God says who told you that you were naked? What possible reason have we to believe that we are naked, or that if we are naked there is something to be ashamed of, that what we are and what we do is something for which we should ever apologise, we should apologise for our dreams, our impulses, our appetites, our drives, our desires? These are not things to apologise for. Our actions sometimes we do apologise for, and we excoriate ourselves for them rightly. But that’s the Genesis myth.

The Greek Myth of Prometheus, who stole fire from Heaven and gave it to his favourite mortal, Man. In other words, the Greeks were saying that we have divine fire, whatever is divine is in us, as Humans. We are as good as the Gods. The Gods are capricious and mean and foolish and stupid and jealous and rapine and all the things that Greek mythology shows that they are. And that’s a much better explanation, it seems to me. And for that the God’s punished Prometheus and chained him to the corpuses, and the vultures chewed away his liver as it everyday regrew as he was immortal, of course … and Shelley quite rightly understood … that that mythological ideal, that the champion of a real humanity and a real Humanism, as we have come to call it, is that we are captains of our soul and masters of our destiny, and that we contain any divine fire that there is, divine fire that is fine and great. It’s perfectly obvious that if there were ever a God, he has lost all possible taste. You've only got to look at - forget the aggression and unpleasantness of the Radical Right or Islamic Hordes to the East - the sheer lack of intelligence and insight and ability to express themselves and infuse others of the priesthood and clerisy here, in this country, and indeed in Europe. God once had Bach and Michelangelo, he had Mozart, and now who does he have? People with ginger whiskers and tinted spectacles who reduce the glories of theology to a kind of 'sharing'. That’s what religion has become, a feeble and anaemic nonsense; because we understood that the fire was within us, it was not in some idol on an alter, whether it was a gold cross, or whether it was a Buddha or anything else … that we have it; the fault is in us, but also the glory is in us, not in our stars. We take credit for what is great about man, and we take blame for what is dreadful about man. We neither grovel nor apoligise at the feet of a God, nor are so infantile as to think that we once had a father as human beings and therefore we must have a divine one too. We need to grow up."

Anyone who saw Fry's episode of Who Do You Think You Are? earlier this year can attest to his aptitude for presenting moving, humourous and informative (worthwhile) television, and this, I'm sure, will be no different. (The series, The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive, begins tonight on BBC 2 at 9pm, and concludes at the same time next Tuesday. An Mp3 of the debate on religion is available to download here - scroll to the bottom of the page.)

Untold Kitsch

Alan Bennett performs Philip Larkin's Aubade (with added New Order soundtrack). It's enough to make one sore.

Childish Glee

And so, for another year, we say goodbye to Doctor Who. I seem to have picked up a habit of missing the series finales, this year because I was at the cinema, watching Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (a film ostensibly aimed at children) rather than the much more respectable Doctor Who (a series ostensibly aimed at children). They both had their faults. In Doctor Who's case, awful cliched tripe dialogue (Said the Dalek to the Cyberman: "You are better than us at only one thing: dying"). And at two and a half hours, Pirates of the Carribean is tortuously long, for no real reason (certainly not for the plot's sake).

But both are redeemed by their sheer audacity. Gleefully, I watch as five million daleks descend upon London and exterminate everything in sight; and a band of rummed feulled pirates fight a Kraken and army of fish-men. In both mediums, there is nothing else that offers such wonderful escapist abandon.

Rob Brydon's Annually Retentive

I've just seen the first episode of Rob Brydon's awesome new show within a show comedy series. Basically it is a British take on the Larry Sanders Show, the great 1990s comedy which starred Garry Shandling as late night talk show host Larry Sanders. Rob Brydon, with team captains Dave Gorman and Jane Moore, presents Annually Retentive, a comedy panel show which has as its subject recent history. The first show focuses on 1997 and has as its guests David Mitchell, Lucy Porter, Richard Bacon and Gail Porter.

But that is only half of the series. The panel show segments, which were filmed as an actual panel show in March, are intercut with scenes detailing the production process. Here Rob Brydon is a a grotesque monster driven by ego and vanity, grumbling that he cannot make jokes about Gail Porter's baldness and seering with jealousy and paranoia that David Mitchell is dominating his show. I can imagine the series only getting better as it continues and plots begin to develop.

Anyway, its really good and if you enjoy things like Peep Show, you'll like this. And, best of all, as it's the BBC, you can watch it online.

An Explanation

Woodchip wallpaper stalks me. The walls of my childhood bedrooms were adorned with woodchip. While the paint on my walls changed, the wallpaper remained. And when I left for university, it followed. I write this in a woodchip walled room as I begin my final week of university. Life beckons and, at present, I have little idea where it will take me (or, indeed, I will take it). This site will hopefully help me along the way.

I doubt there are many digital spaces on the internet that are decorated in woodchip. So if my entries add nothing unique to this vast database of human experience and knowledge, I will at least have that.