14 Things I Saw At Latitude 2014

Given that I have only been back from Suffolk a couple of days, and I'm still reluctant to let go of my festival spirit, I thought I'd use this week's post to recapture some of the things I saw (and loved).

1) The brightly painted Latitude sheep - always a classic Latitude moment - plus it offers a tenuous link to this week's blog theme.

2) A lightning storm as we danced to Damon Albarn on the Obelisk Stage - the sky navy - the rain warm - and our dancing criminal - but it was like no experience I'd ever had before.

3) Luke Wright reading Dad Reins - that last line is caught in my mind and almost has me in tears every time I hear it.

4) D.I.Y - Paul Heaton & Jacqui Abbott - beautiful sunny Friday afternoon - sing-a-long.

5) Jemima Foxtrot mesmerised me with her poetry - her excitement was refreshing and infectious.

6) A guy wearing a basset hound costume in thirty degree heat.

7) Mining The Meaning - "Introduced by Dr Katy Shaw, a leading authority on the mining strike, the event will consider the social, cultural and political legacy of the strike and ask what connections can be drawn to the here-and-now in a post-Thatcher, post-Labour, pro-protest world." - Jemima Foxtrot, Luke Wright, Attila the Stockbroker, Michael Rossen and Andy Bennett read a selection of poems written by miners and their wives at the time of the strikes.

8) On Thursday night we went to the theatre and saw Kate Tempest's Hopelessly Devoted - Thought-provoking and arresting - impossible not to be moved and inspired.

9) Goat - psychedelic, bizarre, unfathomable - Shaun dancing and whooping like something possessed.

10) Vegan food in a field - Peckish Peacock - Healthy Carrot - Churros - And vegan cake

11) Helen Mort - I'd heard Helen read at Latitude 2012, but this year she was even better -if you haven't read any of her poetry then it is a MUST.

12) Hula Hoop Girl - She performed a host of amazing tricks as The Black Keys played - we couldn't take our eyes off her - I think Shaun fell in love.

13) A moth flying to the ground carrying a wasp - squeezing into the grass - burrowing out of sight.

14) Scroobius Pip ending our festival with 'Thou Shalt Always Kill' - packed tent with people spilling outside.   

Read More

The Ning Nang No?

This week's theme is loosely related to a question I've been considering lately.  I've entered a couple of poetry competitions this year.  Two of them were competitions which would result in having a collection published. 

When gathering up my scribblings I realised that my poems fall into two camps: those which I've written to entertain and those which I've written to explore the art form.  The former tend to be a hit with the majority of my audience (people who claim not to like poetry enjoy hearing or reading them) and the latter have received praise from poets whose work and opinions I respect.

In order to succeed in competitions, I always assume that the judges (respected/acclaimed poets) are looking for something which pushes the art form while recognising the tradition.  They want something smart and beautiful which has a tendency to resonate for a long time after it has been read, e.g. Olds' Stag's Leap or McCarthy's The Clothes that escaped the Great War.  These poems are mostly for the poets.  I suspect that the majority of consumers of the 'high art' poetry are poets themselves.

On the other hand, the enduring poems which win the 'nation's favourite' polls, i.e. the popular poetry, are often easier to understand, have basic metrical schemes and simple end rhymes.  They tend to express novel or virtuous philosophical ideas in simple terms, e.g. Kipling's If, Joseph's When I am Old, Eliot's Practical Cats. 

It's the popular poetry which works better for performance.  Long, wordy poems with elaborate metaphors require multiple readings whereas snappy, humorous verse is immediately pleasing.  This accounts, I think, for the success of Kate Tempest and the surge in the popularity of live poetry events. 

Poetry competitions tend to want poems for print rather than performance.  Often, competitions are run with the intention of publishing a collection or an anthology.  These books rarely sell well, which is why literary agents are allergic to poets. 

Much as I despise the term, I do think this comes down to branding.  Take Tim Key.  He made his name on programmes such as Charlie Brooker's Screenwipe, when he would read short, topical poems which were loosely related to the week's news.  His poems are funny and easily understood and yet I bought a copy of his first collection on the back of his performances.  I enjoyed reading it and shared it with my partner.  We both gained pleasure from the reading.  I don't expect I'll go back to the poems to re-read them. 

There are other books of poems which I keep because I do like to read their contents repeatedly (or at least I think that I would like to re-read them but tend not to as I'm busy reading new stuff instead).  I don't see why there shouldn't also be many books of poems which are published as entertainment rather than important tomes, weighty with words of gravity and cleverness.  Just as there is a time for jazz, the blues or classical music, so there is a time for fun, bubbly pop.  And just as there is a time for important collections of poetry, so there is also a time for the Spike Milligan, the Roald Dahl, the Dorothy Parker and the Tim Key. 

As for the poetry competitions, they tend to judge on artistic integrity over entertainment value.  So I suppose I know which poems to enter.  Or perhaps I should start my own competition?

Read More