Money: the enemy of poetry?

I’ve always hated the cliché that great art needs to be created by someone starving in a garret. But in the past week I’ve been to talks by 2 poets I admire whose writing was damaged by their material success.

Tonight John Cooper Clarke spoke at the Cambridge Union Society. He was the original punk poet in the 70s, who went the way of many successful rock stars, submerging himself in a bath of heroin. He stopped writing for decades, and has only recently restarted. He read a few of his new poems, which have a similar wry energy to the old days; but you have to regret those missing decades.

Last week I heard Sophie Hannah talk at Lucy Cavendish College, but not about poetry. She has written almost exclusively crime fiction for years now, and her latest book was the revival of Poirot finally allowed by the Christie family. She told an entertaining story of how it came about, and it did make me want to read the book even though I haven’t been a fan of Poirot since I was about twelve. What I took away from the evening was the sad conviction that she will never go back to writing poetry seriously, after having a best seller in around 20 countries. At least John Cooper Clarke eventually found rehab – what hope is there that Sophie Hannah will ever recover from fame and fortune?

So maybe a garret is the answer? As it happens, Darren and I revisited Leeds at the weekend, where we met as undergraduates and where he did in fact live in the garret of a rat-and-slug-infested slum for 2 years. I can’t say that my stays there filled me with much poetic inspiration – just frequent bouts of norovirus.

Reviews and re:sight

So I finished reading the Don Paterson Selected Works, and did prefer the later ones to the early ones. My favourite was Two Trees from his 2009 collection Rain, but I also liked the title poem from that book and 2 short pieces about his son, The Circle and Correctives. He uses rhyme with increasing frequency as his career progresses, which is a good sign in my book, though the only fixed form I noticed him use is the sonnet. Luckily that’s my favourite.

Since I had 20 minutes to kill today I ventured into the City library and was delighted to find books by both him and Sophie Hannah, so I checked out Rain and also a Selected Works collection by her. Previously I’ve been discouraged that most of the poets I wanted to read weren’t available there, but when they are there they are so much easier to get hold of that at the Uni library that I should really make that my first stop.

The reason I was killing time was waiting for my eye tests. Hateful experience. I know how long I take to pick a style, so I had gone in on Saturday with my contacts in so I could see properly what the different frames looked like. I settled on a pair I liked, and today I couldn’t find them again. Aaaaaargh! Plus the optician changed my prescription, even though the contact lens guy didn’t, so I’m worried the new glasses are going to make me dizzy. I spend so long reading every day, my eye comfort is important. Oh well, could be worse. Hurrah for the lack of glaucoma.

Brief reviews

I’ve read a few more poetry books this week, even venturing back to the University Library again, so I wanted to record some impressions.

 1. Dick Davis, Belonging. I liked this quite a lot. He writes mostly in form, and often about culture clashes (a topic near to my heart). In his case Persian/English/American, which gave a window into a world I know little about. But the themes varied enough to hold my interest after the initial novelty wore off.

 2. Anne Stevenson, Stone Milk. Meh. I like the rhythm of her language, a bit Beowulf, but the extremely long poem about poets in the underworld failed to hold my interest. The short poems in the middle fared little better, and I didn’t even read the play about Medea. I liked her poem ‘Granny Scarecrow’ which was discussed in an online forum, so I may still look out for her collected works.

 3. Sophie Hannah, First of the Last Chances. Gosh, yes. This volume varied much more in subject and tone than Pessimism for Beginners, and I liked many of the poems very much. Not so much the title piece, and just a few others struck a duff note for me, but I just loved ‘You Won’t Find a Bath in Leeds.’ And all of the poems showed an admirable mastery of technique. Well worth sitting in the West Room.

 4. Don Paterson, Selected Work. This was the reason I went back to the library so soon – I signed up for a masterclass with him on Friday, so I wanted to get a feel for his work. The 1-2 poems on his website appealed to me and were in form, so I was hopeful he would be my kind of poet. I’m only halfway through, but it isn’t grabbing me so far. His first book seems to have been like what 99% of other modern poets are writing (not that this is objectively a bad thing, just that it doesn’t rock my boat). But he did make progress over the next couple of books (and I am only up to about 1999), so I’m reserving judgment.

 I am nervous about the masterclass experience – signing up for it made me realize that I have never had any sort of training in writing poetry. And I don’t think I want to be taught to write the way everyone else writes. ‘I do not approve of anything that tampers with natural ignorance,’ as Lady Bracknell said.