Category: How Words Play
-
At Carmel Highlands.
by Janet Lewis.
Below the gardens and the darkening pines
The living water sinks among the stones,
Sinking yet foaming, till the snowy tones
Merge with the fog drawn landward in dim lines.
The cloud dissolves among the flowering vines,
And now the definite mountain-side disowns
The fluid world, the immeasurable zones.
The white oblivion swallows all designs.
But still the rich confusion of the sea,
Unceasing voice, sombre and solacing,
Rises through veils of silence past the trees;
In restless repetition bound, yet free,
Wave after wave in deluge fresh releasing
An ancient speech, hushed in tremendous ease.
From The Making of a Sonnet, Eds, Edward Hirsch and Eavan Boland. A Norton Anthology, 2008.
-
On Rebellion, by Prageeta Sharma.
(for Katy Lederer)
“It was not a romantic sentiment , nor self-determined; rather , it was embarrassing.
My love of spearheading, from introvert to extrovert,
from cowardice to consequence, from the enjambment to the unspecified dunce.
It was a sabotage, a reckless moment : a purulent, tawny decree.
All temptation puzzled me and drew me in.
I dropped out of a large life,
I flew over exams, I punched out breakfast teachers with lunch money,
toiling over the idea of belonging rather than over upward mobility.
I understood how power flung outward
into the troves of the cursed ( I felt troubled or cursed all of the time).
I wasn’t bearing oranges, limes, or even lemons.
All of it blurred together so that a mere suggestion made by
an outside force was something to be freely ignored.
I could nod off, I could misinterpret, it could be reconfigured as a negotiation.
The fog felt like an aphorism. Never lifting, always dull,
always an added pull. The tribunal cloud judged below, judged my direction.
There was lying, conning, faking, elucidating in order to get away with undoing.
I was interested in preserving yet I can’t tell you if it felt
sacred or befallen.
Your anxiety might have represented a crushing faith
or a character assassination, my own or someone else’s.
Or a lack of grip on reality : the wet rip of the grocery bags
all of it falling –
your body on all fours.
Accumulating soot upon retrieval.
There were downsides to feeling different so I huddled
in the corner (not a ball, not rocking). I felt friendless and yet social.
I felt no aptitude towards refining a skill.
However, words cut my brain into two brains with their precipice
their demarcations, their incisions (too strong a word).
They held me captive against their edge,
their influence : I felt like insinuating something delicate or dear.Now- I am playing on- trying to pay attention to the collusion that I must
be playing over
and over in my mind, and it was my mind,
it needed me to leave everything outside, on the steps or in the sky,
to feign exhaustion in order to meet an aberration,
the one in the corner that felt large and carefree with its
own vernacular sprawled with whitewash on bricks or floors or that ghastly
far above that kept me standing very still but perhaps I wasn’t inactive,
I was just interpreting what had already been an assumed boundary,
immersed in its insularity and in what stuck to its roundedness.”Prageeta Sharma was born in Framingham, Mass. in 1972. Her parents came from Jaipur. This poem is taken from The Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets, ed Jeet Thayil. Bloodaxe Books 2008. Reviewed at this link.
-
“The TLS is only interested in getting the best reviews of the most important books,” and “while women are heavy readers, we know they are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS.“ (Peter Stothard, making his own importance)
So are Newspaper literary supplements and literary magazines not employing women reviewers,editors and /or critics, or are they just riddled with meddlesome women-misogynists who think that fellating the alpha-male poet/ fiction writer is a recognition of women’s contribution to the literary arts ?
At the end of 2010 the editorial and best books lists began to emerge, list after list evinced a paucity of women writers in poetry, in fiction and in the arts. Interestingly,the horizontal media feeds like Twitter and Facebook hardly picked up on the issue of the profound absence of women writers from the 2010 lists.
Article 1
4 Times Square, 20th Floor
New York, NY 10036
Dear Editors of the New Yorker,
“I am writing to express my alarm that this is now the second issue of the NYer in a row where only two (tiny) pieces out of your 76 page magazine are written by women. The January 3rd, 2011 issue features only a Shouts & Murmurs (Patricia Marx) and a poem (Kimberly Johnson). Every other major piece—the fiction, the profile, and all the main nonfiction pieces—is written by a man. Every single critic is a male writer.
We were already alarmed when we flipped through the Dec 20th & 27th double-issue to find that only one piece (Nancy Franklin) and one poem (Alicia Ostriker) were written by women. A friend pointed out that Jane Kramer wrote one of the short Talk of the Town segments as well, though it barely placated our sense of outrage that one extra page, totaling three, out of the 148 pages in the magazine, were penned by women. Again, every critic is a man. To make matters more depressing, 22 out of the 23 illustrators for the magazine are men. Seriously!
Women are not actually a minority group, nor is there a shortage, in the world, of female writers. The publishing industry is replete with female editors, and it would be too obvious for me to point out to you that the New Yorker masthead has a fair number of female editors in its ranks. And so we are baffled, outraged, saddened, and a bit depressed that, though some would claim our country’s sexism problem ended in the late 60’s, the most prominent and respected literary magazine in the country can’t find space in its pages for women’s voices in the year 2011.
I have enclosed the January issue and expect a refund. You may either extend our subscription by one month, or you can replace this issue with a back issue containing a more equitable ratio of male to female voices. I plan to return every issue that contains fewer than five women writers. You tend to publish 13 to 15 writers in each issue; 5 women shouldn’t be that hard.”
A dismayed reader,
Anne Hays
Article 2 : From VIDA , The Count ( December 2010):
“The truth is, these numbers don’t lie. But that is just the beginning of this story. What, then, are they really telling us? We know women write. We know women read. It’s time to begin asking why the 2010 numbers don’t reflect those facts with any equity. Many have already begun speculating; more articles and groups are pointing out what our findings suggest: the numbers of articles and reviews simply don’t reflect how many women are actually writing. VIDA is here to help shape that discussion. Please tell us about the trends you’ve witnessed in your part of the writing world. Let us know what you think is going on. We’re ready and anxious to hear from you. We’re ready to invest our efforts and energy into the radical notion that women are writers too”
Article 3 : The Harriet blog, published by Poetry Foundation has taken up the issue , and I am excerpting here:
“Here at Poetry we were all interested in “The Count” that VIDA recently produced. Interested, but not especially surprised. The count shows—with pretty devastating consistency—that women are under-represented in all of the major literary magazines, including Poetry (though Poetry fares much better than the others).
This didn’t surprise us because the issues that VIDA are raising have long been of concern to us. The disparity is something I first noticed seven years ago when I commissioned Averill Curdy to write an essay wondering where all the women poetry critics were. Subsequent issues contained responses from well-known women poet-critics of another generation . The aim was to provoke a conversation, first of all, but more importantly to get more women writing in the back pages of the magazine. More recently, senior editor Don Share participated in a roundtable on gender and publishing sponsored by VIDA.”
Poetry, The Harriet Blog (Poetry Foundation)
Article 4: Guardian Discussion on the VIDA figure which elicited a quote from Peter Stothard (TLS) :
“The TLS is only interested in getting the best reviews of the most important books,” and “while women are heavy readers, we know they are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS.“
-
Vida, Women in Literary Arts published a list in 2010 which showed that there is , indeed, a gender-imbalance in literary publication. The figures for 2010 have borne out the VIDA Count. The Guardian Newspaper published those VIDA figures in the following linked article,
Research shows male writers still dominate books world (Friday 4 February 2011) ,
“Statistics compiled by Vida, an American organisation for women in the literary arts, found gender imbalances in every one of the publications cited, including the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement and the New York Review of Books.
In the UK, the LRB reviewed 68 books by women and 195 by men in 2010, with men taking up 74% of the attention, and 78% of the reviews written by men. Seventy-five per cent of the books reviewed in the TLS were written by men (1,036 compared to 330) with 72% of its reviewers men”
Peter Stothard‘s response to The Count (2010) by VIDA was,
“The TLS is only interested in getting the best reviews of the most important books,” and “while women are heavy readers, we know they are heavy readers of the kind of fiction that is not likely to be reviewed in the pages of the TLS.”
Not Our Kind, My Dear. (excerpted)
” when polished nails touch Ulysses
Marion Bloom appears on the cover
corseted and heaving
over the leather’s topbetween that and her windblown hair,
No it’s not literary No it’s not No important enoughfor these pages, my dear “
I do not think there is much to celebrate in terms of our modernism, when old-school type bias and inequality is quite plainly creeping into our political systems, and our worlds of literature and art. 2010 was an appalling year for equality at many levels of society. Gladly, 2011 has been thus far better in terms of women writers and that should be reflected by editors in their wee (tiny) lists.
- Publication Bias via Vida, Women in the Literary Arts
- Anne Hays letter to the New Yorker Magazine
- Guardian discussion of the VIDA Count here
The Switaj poem is here ‘Not Our Kind , My Dear’ a poem by Elizabeth Kate Switaj , in response to Peter Stothard. (Editor of the Times Literary Supplement)
-
THE ARTS AND THE ELECTIONS
The election has been called and a new government is imminent. That means new policies and new priorities – with no guarantees for funding and continued investment in the arts.
Once again, we must make a case for the arts. We must:
- lobby to maintain a full cabinet Minister for Arts
- promote the role and value of the arts
- campaign for continued and increased investment in the arts
- advocate for the provision of appropriate social protection for artists and those who work in the arts.
Once again, we need your help. You can help in five simple ways:
1. ATTEND THE HUSTINGS
In Dublin the arts spokespersons from all 5 political parties will attend a meeting to outline their respective arts policies and answer your questions. There will be a similar format in Galway with candidates from Galway East and West constituencies invited to present their local arts policy and answer your questions.
Come along and make the arts an election issue. It’s important we show politicians the arts matter!
Monday 14 FebruaryDublin: 10.45am – 12.15 Project Arts Centre, Temple Bar
Galway: 11.00am Radisson Blu Hotel
If you would like any further information about our activities this year please contact Tania Banotti. The website will be updated with all relevant information about the campaign by next week.
Campaign for Arts
A brief note on arts policy and the 2011 General Election.
I note that Fine Gael has released a policy document in relation to arts, this is press-released from the National campaign for Arts website, which I am linking here, beneath this brief excerpt. This link is to the National Campaign for Arts index page . I will add in other political party policy papers if they become available during the election campaign.
Fine Gael Arts Policy 2010.
• The arts and culture “will have a seat at the cabinet table” in any future FG government.
• Commitment to a flagship Literature Centre in a landmark building in Dublin, given the UNESCO City of literature designation and possibly a new arts and film channel.
• A much greater commitment to the arts in the school curricula & the cultural rights of children as well as core funding for organisations providing arts programming for children
• As part of 2016 commemoration, a range of new commissions beginning immediately.
.
• National Endowment Fund for the Arts to be set up.• Arts Council vacancies in future will be in future advertised.
One hopes that ‘ the seat at the cabinet table ‘will comprise a full portfolio…
-
Making Poetry.
by Anne Stevenson.
‘You have to inhabit poetry
if you want to make it.’
And what’s to ‘inhabit ‘ ?
To be in the habit of, to wear
words, sitting in the plainest light,
in the silk of morning, in the shoe of night;
a feeling bare and frondish is surprising air;
familiar…rare.
And whats ‘to make’ ?
To be and to become words’ passing
weather ; to serve a girl on terrible
terms, embark on voyages over voices,
evade the ego-hill, the misery-well,
the siren-hiss of success, publish,
success, success, success.
And why inhabit, make, inherit poetry ?
Oh , it’s the shared comedy of the worst
blessed ; the sound leading the hand;
a worldlife running from mind to mind
through the washed rooms of the simple senses;
one of those haunted, undefendable, unpoetic
crosses we have to find.
from Anne Stevenson , Poems 1955-2005, Publ. Bloodaxe Books.
Carol of the Birds
by Anne Stevenson.
Feet that could be clawed, but are not ….
Arms that might have flown, but did not…
No-one said, ‘Let there be angels!’ but the birds
whose choirs fling alleluias over the sea,
Herring gulls, black backs carolling raucoucly
While cormorants dry their wings on a rocky stable.
Plovers that stoop to sanctify the land
And scoop small, roundy mangers in the sand,
Swaddle a saviour each in a speckled shell.
A chaffinchy fife unreeling in the marsh
Accompanies the tune a solo thrush
Half sings, half talks in riffs of wordless words,
As hymns flare up from tiny muscled throats,
Robins and hidden wrens whose shiny notes
Tinsel the precincts of the winter sun.
What loftier organ than those pipes of beech,
pillars resounding with the jackdaws’ speech,
And poplars swayed with light like shaken bells?
Wings that could be hands, but are not…
Cries that might be pleas yet cannot
Question or disinvent the stalker’s gun,
Be your own hammerbeam angels of the air
Before in the maze of space, you disappear,
Stilled by our dazzling anthrocentric mills.
from Anne Stevenson , Poems 1955-2005, Publ. Bloodaxe Books. -
The Salt Publishing blog has been involved in the Facebook campaign to restore Sue Hubbard’s Eurydice to the London underground spoke this morning at their delight in the poem’s restoration. The poem had been painted over to the sadness of travellers and poets. I will be adding a link in here which carries with it the history of the destruction of the image and it’s restoration to public view. There will also be a link to the Salt Publishing blog at the end of this short post: 18/01/2010
Ten years ago, as part of the renovation of the South Bank undertaken by Avery Architects, the Arts Council and the BFI commissioned the award-winning poet and art critic Sue Hubbard to write a poem for the underpass that leads from Victory Arch at Waterloo Station to the IMAX cinema. Written in a series of three-lined stepped stanzas the poem was set out so that it could be read whilst walking through the tunnel. Using the metaphor of Eurydice descending into the underworld it aimed to make walkers feel safe. As well as the classical myth, the poem’s imagery makes reference to London’s Thameside history and to the famous Waterloo clock, a meeting point in so many British films.
As an example of innovative public art, it has been written about in architectural journals and was the subject of a commissioned essay from Sue Hubbard by The Poetry Society, Opening Spaces, written during her residency as The Poetry Society’s only Public Art Poet. It formed the backdrop to a National Film School production will you forget me? (Stephen Bennet) and Lifelines, a Channel 4 drama produced by Carnival films. The poem has also been requested on Radio 4’s Poetry Please. “
Eurydice
by Sue Hubbard
I am not afraid as I descend,
step by step, leaving behind the salt wind
blowing up the corrugated river,the damp city streets, their sodium glare
of rush-hour headlights pitted with pearls of rain;
for my eyes still reflect the half remembered moon.Already your face recedes beneath the station clock,
a damp smudge among the shadows
mirrored in the train’s wet glass,will you forget me? Steel tracks lead you out
past cranes and crematoria,
boat yards and bike sheds, ruby shardsof roman glass and wolf-bone mummified in mud,
the rows of curtained windows like eyelids
heavy with sleep, to the city’s green edge.Now I stop my ears with wax, hold fast
the memory of the song you once whispered in my ear.
Its echoes tangle like briars in my thick hair.You turned to look.
Seconds fly past like birds.
My hands grow cold. I am ice and cloud.This path unravels.
Deep in hidden rooms filled with dust
and sour night-breath the lost city is sleeping.Above the hurt sky is weeping,
soaked nightingales have ceased to sing.
Dusk has come early. I am drowning in blue.I dream of a green garden
where the sun feathers my face
like your once eager kiss.Soon, soon I will climb
from this blackened earth
into the diffident light.Eurydice , by Sue Hubbard , Ghost Station , publ. Salt.
Ghost Station from Salt Publishing Blog
Restoration of Eurydice announced after a Facebook Campaign
Guardian Books Blog archiveEDIT : Guardian report at 18.57pm today :
“A mural poem composed to comfort travellers descending into one of Britain’s most dismal underworlds is being recreated after more than 1,000 people who mourned its destruction paid to have it restored.
The poem, Eurydice, is one of the longest pieces of public art in the capital. It was inscribed along a concrete tunnel connecting Waterloo station with the Imax cinema and the South Bank 10 years ago.
It was destroyed last autumn – a fortnight after Time Out magazine listed it as one of London’s best pieces of secret art – when contractors for Network Rail painted over it, claiming to be cleaning up the tunnel.”
-
Earth Mother
for Firoana.
The plains of Romania
Under thirty degrees of heat
Stretch to the poplar trees
At the edge of the earth.
A weathered peasant lady
Offers me water,
Her toothless smile
Mothers me
As I rest in the shade.
She is a daughter of this soil,
Of sun and sweat and toil.
I am from a city
She will never visit.
As I return her smile
And sip her water
She is every woman’s mother,
I am every woman’s daughter.
from Still, by Helen Soraghan Dwyer.
Máthair Chréafóige
do Firoana
Machairí na Rómáine
I mbrothall an lae
Síneann go poibleoga bhána
Ar imeall an domhain.
Bean chríonna tuaithe
A thairgeann deoch dom,
Miongháire mantach
Dom mhúirniú
Istigh faoin bhfothain.
Iníon chréafóige í,
Iníon allais is gréine.
Ón gcathair nach bhfeicfir choíche
Is ea do thángas.
Aoibh ormsa leis
Ag ól uisce,
Iníon cách mise,
Máthair cách í siúd.
as Faire, le Helen Soraghan Dwyer. Lapwing Publications, Belfast 2010.
Note about the Book.
I picked up this book and another volume of women’s poetry on Saturday, in my local bookshop. The poetry section is well-balanced and stocked. As I have not asked permission to advertise the shop, so I won’t name the wonderful proprietor yet. Suffice it to say that she also does some excellent internet ordering , and has some independently bound essays which are virtually impossible to get in Ireland. I shall edit this with a link to catalogues in the near future.Máthair Chréafóige – Earth Mother by Helen Soraghan Dwyer. From Still – Faire. Trans, Bernadette Nic an tSaoir Lapwing Publications 2010.
Chris Murray 