Been a busy few months, this is the first chance I’ve had to update my blog for ages…
Thanks to everyone who came along to the Tangerine Press/Rising Poetry event in London. It was great to catch up with everyone. There are some incredible voices in the underground right now, and quite a few of them were reading at the Betsey in July. Reminded me why I enjoy the ridiculous profession of poetry, and why it still matters.
A few days ago I wrote a blog for Leeds’ Culture Vulture. It’s about the array of awful jobs I’ve had over the years, my life as a factotum in the late 90s. You can read the blog here.
I’ve spent the last few days holed up in a beach shack in Robin Hood’s Bay reading Lady Chatterley’s Lover in my flip-flops. Pisses all over Fifty Shades of Grey. D.H. Lawrence certainly sets my fire burning, his Rabbit Snared in the Night poem was the starting point for my forthcoming collection.
Other stuff: I’ve recently watched Brideshead Revisited on DVD and realised how brilliant Waugh’s book was in its Granada TV adaptation.; saw Sarah Lucas’ grotesque display of spectacular knob-gags Ordinary Things at my old gaff the Henry Moore Institute; fluked a ticket for The Stone Roses at Heaton Park and put my back outwith over-zealous dancing; listened to Odetta’s 1957 version of Gallow’s Pole and fell in love with folk all over again; handed in my manuscript of Dark Corners of the Land; read Cesare Pavese’s rather stunning early prose poems in Disaffections; fell asleep listening to the sound of treacherous rain beating at my window; and finally got round to reading Richard Ford’s A Piece of My Heart – can’t believe I’ve only just discovered his creeping dustbowl genius.
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