Four Ferocious Fulmars

First link's to the music game Hooked on Music created by Citizen Science and discovered through Radio 4's Inside Science. It's meant to be a large scale study of what makes songs catchy (or not) and it's bloody fun as well. The song starts, and if you recognise it you get to sing the bits that are missing. Bit like karaoke being used for the good of science.

Wonder if something similar would work for poetry?

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Read Jose Varghese's post on Paxman, nice to get his perspective on it.

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George Szirtes blogs like crazy and they're always very readable. This week it's speaking Hungarian and reading to old ladies. Wish he'd write some fiction.

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Came across Jon Stone for the first time via Ben Wilkinson on Facebook and through Jon the excellent Sidekick Books blog, etc. It's stimulating stuff as well, and aside from the video game/poetry posts Jon has put up that I'll think about later, there's an entertaining dressing down of Don Paterson's contribution to 'Letters to a Young Poet,' which was broadcast on BBC3. So Don and Jon, they argue like it's true love.

Here's a few excerpts from the article:

Don: The truly original idea must be part familiar, so that it can take the reader on a journey from the known to the unknown.

Jon: But anyone who has ever found themselves baffled and dismayed by other readers' enthusiasm or glowing testimonials will know that there is no formula for emotional impact. 

ROY: Ye-ah, but. But there are some givens, surely? I mean, we're an endurance predator that's evolved in a specific environment; emotion in-so-far as it's an evolved part of our physiology is at least systematic, if not formulaic. Isn't that why Hollyoaks works, not to mention ALL OF THOSE KOREAN DRAMAS?

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Don: Readers read poetry to take them closer to something powerful and dangerous that they will not usually be prepared to let themselves feel.

Jon: Don's correspondent risks ending up lacking individual character in his poetry as a result of seeking guidance as to how to impress Don the reader, how to write poetry in the style of Don Paterson.

ROY: Jon is bang on I reckon. But then, isn't that just how it works? The anxiety of influence and all that? And the ones who overcome the influence mix stuff up into something interesting?

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Don: The brain will entertain anything that is sung to it first, even things it vowed not to let pass.

Jon: Pertinent - this whole essay is an exercise in singing sweetly in order that the listener's brain entertain (and perhaps accept) what are often very wild assertions. So point proven, I guess. 

ROY: Duh, persuasion is built into language, to the extent that they're pretty much synonymous. That's why your post's so bloody iconoclastically brilliant too.  

Three Triumphant Tangerines

Right so there's the Paxman furore to start with, isn't there? For anyone who isn't aware, Jeremy Paxman, Newsnight host who loves to stick his stick in nests of any sort and, until fairly recently, facial hair experimenter extraordinaire was chosen to be one of the Forward Prize judges. Well, now quite a lot of poetry people seem to thing he's a bit of a twat for saying uncultured things like, "[poetry] has connived at its own irrelevance," and that he wishes poetry in general would just, "raise its game a little bit."

A lot of his remarks seem extremely sensible to the President of R.O.Y. (i.e. me) and I was also pleased to read Ms Baroque's post 'Paxman, poets, and the 'pellety nest'', which is as balanced but biting as her best.

It's worth reading Michael Symmons Roberts' response to Paxo's comments too. I thought his most sensible remark to be: "we have lost the sense that poetry sits halfway between prose and music - that you can't expect to read it like a novel. We are quite used to downloading an album and listening to certain tracks ... poetry needs to be consumed in that way." Must admit I'm not a fan of the nasal haughtiness detectable in Roberts ('we are quite used', 'you can't expect') but I agree completely with this. Still, don't think many poetry people think twice of simply how unnatural it is to be self-conscious about language. It would also be nice to see more practical experimentation with feasible/marketable audio productions.

How best to achieve this? Single poems being available for download is excellent, pricing them sensibly too?

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Mr Ben Wilkinson's new pamphlet 'For Real' has been launched and it looks spectacular in Liverpool red. Hopefully be reading my own copy before too long as sent a cheque sometime last week through the post. Don't want to think about how long it will take to traipse its way to my doorstep though.

There's a nice 'next big thing' Q&A on Ben's blog, which is worth a gander.

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Thirdly, one of my poems has been accepted by Helen Ivory for publication on IS&T so that's good. If you don't know the magazine then check it out. Lots and lots of poems, a huge archive and editors. Editors that I believe to be good, which is a statement I make completely without bias of any kind.