AOL and The Huffington Post

The Huff is now the main news page on AOL in the UK and its proof readers are to be congratulated on producing accurate, grammatically correct copy. Unfortunately, the front page of AOL is still written by bozos who are unable to spell or to write anything that makes sense. Until the Huff controls the front page as well AOL.co.uk will remain a haven for illiterati.

Today's front page gems (the inside versions of these by the Huffington Post are correct - it's just the usual AOL ace cub reporters who can't write) :

Landlords boast profits in rent boom

Italy to vote crunch on austerity plans

Poppy burning Muslim group faces ban

And the judge said...

Bank Street Writers
International Short Story Competition 2011
Judged by Joan Park, novelist.

RESULTS

1st Prize £75.00
Parsons and Pretenders (Austentatious) by Andrew Campbell-Kearsey, Brighton.
‘An imaginative title and a good opening line create interest. The writer shows a good use of language and I enjoyed his alliteration and play on words. The reference to celebrities puts the story in time and place and the ending rounds off the story perfectly. Emotion: Laughter.’

2nd Prize £50.00
A Prescription for Horror by Ken Marshall, Torfaen.
‘A clever title sets the scene for this powerful story. I enjoy binary combinations and here we have innocence v testosterone fuelled wickedness. An excellent short story where a lot is said in a few words. Emotion: Dread.’

3rd Prize £25.00
Statues by Sue Johnson, Pershore.
‘Here we have a formidable boy meets girl story. We know how it is going to end but the getting there is enjoyable. The alliteration – clearing clutter, finished by Friday, damage was drop-dead gorgeous, all flowed beautifully. Emotion: Satisfaction.’

Two stories were Highly Commended:

Maiden Voyage by Norman Kitching, Gosport.
‘A good title, a sense of place and a character who we can relate to set the scene for this story. Life gets in the way of most of our dreams but Sadie hangs on to hers and we can applaud her for this. A Twist in the Tale ending is not always successful, but we have it here and it works. Emotion: Surprise.’

High Hopes by Sarah Evans, Welwyn Garden City.
‘An emotional story with a lot of believable dialogue between mother and son. We all want our children to be ‘normal’ and fit in and in this story we share the mother’s frustration when her son doesn’t conform. Emotion: Pity.’

The Hard Traveller

Thirty years down the line, Dave Sharp now has a top repertoire of his own songs. Some of these refer to his time spent in America where he played alongside many of the big names. His lyrics reflect a troubadour tradition that goes back to Woody Guthrie, in fact some of the songs are what could be called updates on old Guthrie songs.

When you hear a song like his 'Hard Travellin' for the first time, especially if like me your music roots go back to the American folk tradition, it is hard not to be moved by the resonance of the lyrics: the poor are given comfort through religion, there are references to the 'last fair deal' and to a 'vision of the nation'. Guthrie himself wrote a different 'Hard Travellin' and lived that life, travelling around America, championing the oppressed, singing for his supper.

Dave Sharp's version contains some terrific imagery:

Desert roses far from water... three ravens rising, two rivers raging... and so on.

His voice has certainly mellowed since the Alarm days, and has that 'been around' edge that only constant gigging and Marlboros can produce. He is of course living the legend of the hard traveller, gigging all over the country up to four times a week at small venues. He has a particularly strong following in Scotland and Wales.

It is fair to say his overall performance at these gigs - I have seen three of them this year - puts most other solo acts in the shade. I don't see many if any guitarists with his flatpicking skills and I see a lot of guitarists.

I am looking forward to his new material with a new band. The CD should be out in a few months time. Meanwhile you can catch plenty of his stuff on youtube both the more recent solo material and his work with The Alarm. It is worth noting some of the comments by youtube viewers many of whom refer to him as a greatly underrated guitarist, as the engine or powerhouse of the Alarm and so on.

Try to listen to his 'Looking this world over' or to my own favourite 'Mexico'. Great songs. His eponymous website has a long list of gigs to come this year.

David Byrne: Ride, Rise, Roar. The Michael Clark Company: come, been and gone.

Two very different dance productions came to Manchester this month. On Thursday 20th January we went to see ‘Ride, Rise, Roar’. This was a film about David Byrne’s tour a couple of years ago and was different in that he had three dancers animating his songs during each concert. Unfortunately, the showing at the Imax in Manchester was very badly advertised and only a handful of people turned up to watch it. Besides the Byrne classics there was some newer material which was very different and exciting. The dancers made a huge difference to the performance. At the end of the film we were ushered to a different screen in the complex for a live satellite link-up where we watched a question and answer session with David Byrne and Stuart McClunie. This was much shorter than we were told it would be by the cinema staff and McClunie only let one member of the audience in London ask one question while he asked loads. He seemed ill at ease with the whole interview and was disappointing. David Byrne, looking as youthful as ever despite the white hair, was much more amenable, probably because he had nothing to prove.

The second event was the Michael Clark Company’s ‘come, been and gone’ at The Lowri on Friday 28th January. This was an amazing show. The first dance under the heading ‘gone’ was from ‘Swamp’ a revival from the 1990s set to pulsating, electronic music by Wire and Bruce Gilbert. This was perhaps my favourite section of the night. The four other sections were set to music by Brian Eno, Lou Reed, Kraftwerk and above all David Bowie. Of course,the interpretation of Bowie’s more popular numbers such as Heroes and The Jean Genie went down a storm. The costumes were mostly by Stevie Stewart. The dancers were Kate Coyn, Melissa Hetherington, (both of whom teach for the Company) Oxana Panchenko, Brooke Smiley, Harry Alexander, Simon Williams and Benjamin Warbis.
This was the kind of performance you could watch many times and experience something different each time. With up to seven dancers on stage, plus the music and sometimes back projection, there is so much to take in that a very enjoyable sensory overload occurs. It was uplifting, it was fabulous. From androgynous costumes to complement Bowie’s music, to a figure stuck with hypodermics while Lou Reed sang about heroin, there was a very powerful connection between costumes and movement and sound.
The dancers rightly received several long curtain calls from the packed house. A whole new performance will premier in London in June. Not to be missed.

Comet (for Chris Woods)

Where the high horizon sutures the sky
to Holcombe Moor
way up above the padlocked hut
his dog tailwags up ahead alongside the one
stringvested hillrunner
while he and his alchemist hold
this season-soaked day about them
as they calibrate and calculate
and examine a sclerotic sky for
one sign of it.

But jagged time arcs away
towards Two Brooks and beyond
as the weather presents
a fond bleakness.

Down the generations
it’s a night tingling with stars
that grants his last wish to his grandchildren
now full-grown who step aside for
the ghost of the hillrunner
as they screen subatomic
pointing the autoscope
to capture at last
the faithful messenger sizzling
through an ocean of sky.

Chris Woods visits Bank Street

A very well attended November Bank Street Writers meeting in Bolton had the well-known local poet Chris Woods as guest.

Chris started by referring with affection to Anne Hendy, whose recent loss was felt by so many of us, and read from her ‘Snapshots’ collection the poems Pisces, Visit from my Great Aunts and Mother’s Day.

Chris then treated us to a baker’s dozen of his own poems. The first of these was about North West Water digging up his road. Naturally, some of his poetry reflects his locality on the edge of Holcombe Moor. The next poem Racing Time for Ron Heaton referred to a local hill-runner whom he got to know whilst out walking his dog. Another dog walking poem followed this time in the snow. White Walk, just like the previous poems, had striking imagery and a powerful ending, ‘up to my knees in dazzle.’

The theme changed to astronomy and we were treated to On Not Seeing Halley’s Comet where a repetitive affirmation was seen in the comet’s return. Newtonian Analysis dealt with one of Chris’s pet subjects, the master scientist, whilst Hut was about a retreat for writing and meditation. There followed two festive poems, Pumpkin Lantern ( with its final ‘You have changed into yourself’) and Bonfire Night, a vivid poem about children and firelight.

A moving poem for his father, Sealham Harbour For My Father considered the power of the tide ‘as the sea takes the sand and time away’ whilst Seasons For My Father reflected his belief that we tend to associate memories with particular seasons: ‘snow and silence everywhere.’

As a GP he would be expected to write a lot of poems about medecine but in fact, though using medical imagery, not many of his poems are about his job. One that he read for us was Coronary Care. In this poem he addresses the heart directly: ‘my red balloon…my bruised red apple… sweet heart… such love I took for granted.’

To Cows was just that and included the clever ‘the Milky Way their memorial overhead.’

The final poem The Lawn Is Green, about planting a new lawn, referred to with the medical image of ‘a graft’, again involved his children at play on the new carpet and contained a line which certainly made me green with envy: ‘elbowing the distance to one side.’

What struck me above all about Chris’s poetry was that it was considerably elevated above narrative or location poetry through astounding and unexpected imagery and the juxtaposition of the personal and the external, the individual and the panorama.

Thank you Chris for your inspiring poetry!

And the Judge said...

Bank Street Writers Poetry Competition 2010

What guarantees entry to the No pile? Sloppiness, for a start. Inattention to line lengths, inaccuracy. Teeth don’t smirk, mouths do. Faces don’t chew. Clichés won’t win you any prizes, either. Neither will clunky or archaic language, inversions and poems that strive to be ‘poetic’. Poetry is intrinsically poetic. It doesn’t have to be given gossamer threads and veils. Every noun doesn’t need an adjective. A poem with a good title helps. A title is the door to the poem. But the door doesn’t need announcing and the door doesn’t need to be repeated. That’ll only get your poem in the No pile.
So, what gets into the Yes pile? Poetry that is arresting and original. There were a lot of poems about MPs’ expenses, which probably says something about what’s irking people at the moment, but it did little to make me sit up and pay attention. What caught my eye were a striking use of language, atmosphere, texture, good lineation, a real sense of structure and a willingness to trust the words to work. Of course, words won’t work for you unless you choose the right ones and – to paraphrase Coleridge – put them in their right order.
Dance of the Cobblers has some nice detail in it. I liked Mr Boorman’s drizzling fag and the beeswaxed thread and bottles of dye. I also liked some of the detail in Talecrumbs I Left Myself for Navigation (marvellous title!) and the gentle way it explores the ways we find home.
Swingers caught me by surprise with its ending. I’d thought the poem rather ‘usual’ till I read the last stanza. The notion that a silence can lie beneath our clothes is interesting, but it’s the penultimate line that really catches you unawares – Cool, unsteady, I bandage myself – as if the narrator were somehow damaged by the whole experience. The juxtaposition of cool with unsteady surprises, too. This deserves a commendation. Big Fish is a superb poem. There’s a real sense of place. Time is held in the balance here. Two boys are fishing. The ‘howl of school has vanished’ and ‘giant carp/move slow as blood cells’. The mood is still. I can’t help thinking about Ted Hughes’ famous Pike. There are deep things being alluded to here – war, ‘pockmarked Madonnas/with dirty mouths’. The poet says ‘Some stains never come out’ and we imagine degradation and dereliction, death perhaps. But the fish are ‘lavender’ and they ‘whisker the smoky water’. This is a poem about finding peace in a damaged world. The last line is heartbreaking in its simplicity. I just have a few quibbles with some of the line lengths and perhaps mildew isn’t luminous – it’s black or grey, isn’t it? I’m nitpicking. I’m having to. There’s some very strong work here. I like this poem very much. This is a poet whose work I would choose to read.
Grunting Up gets a well earned 3rd prize. I had no idea that sows sing when they’re being suckled. This poem has a nice physicality. The use of ‘plug on’ to describe the way a piglet will latch onto the sow’s nipple is accurate and inventive. It has a good strong sound.
The 2nd prize goes to Acting Blackbird. The use of language is dynamic and the metaphor of the blackbird as an actor is well-sustained. Not an easy thing to do throughout an entire poem. Well done.
And finally, the 1stprize is awarded to The Rambla at Alfaix. This poem is assured and measured. The opening line reminded me slightly of The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket by Robert Lowell and, because The Rambla at Alfaix is such an accomplished piece of work, it immediately made me suspicious. I had to Google a few lines just to make sure it wasn’t nicked – ‘small dark oranges hard as want’ for example. There is so much detail here – ‘livid pomegranates//split open in the dust’ ‘fine dots of rain//sharp as pipa shells’ ‘a single slit of weed’. Small things have a way of bringing larger ones into focus. They contrast with the flood, with the memory of a river, abandonment, injuries. We’re never told what happened and the narrator doesn’t conjecture. We are given the freedom to inhabit the poem, to walk, to experience the season of drought and neglect. Like the previous poem, dereliction and damage and a certain poverty are suggested, but the tone couldn’t be more different. Only one nitpick here – the fourth stanza could be a couplet to complete the overall sense of unity in the structure. But really, this is very good work. I’d certainly be thinking of publication if I’d written this.

Pat Winslow