T. S. Eliot Prize

The weekend before last, I went with my dad to see the shortlisters of the T. S. Eliot poetry prize reading their work at the Royal Festival Hall. Due to various inanities on my part, we missed the first two speakers (Simon Armtiage and John Haynes - I was particularly bitter about the former, on whom I have harboured an enormous crush for years, despite the fringe). The performances we did catch were all wonderful, though; I particularly loved Robin Robertson's wonderful descriptions of the natural world, as in these lines from 'Abandon':

That moment, when the sun ignites the valley and picks out
Every bud that's greened that afternoon; when birds
Spill from the trees like shaken sheets: that sudden loosening
Into beauty...

Heavenly, too, was Daljit Nagra's charming and witty reading of the winner Derek Walcott's poems. In the car on the way home afterwards, my dad and I discussed the power of poetry, and all the things that it can do. It is at once utterly superfluous and completely necessary for the soul, we agreed; the medium where sign and signifier seem closest, where emotion and intellect are fully in harmony. We both found ourselves inspired to write poems in the next couple of days. Mine was profoundly silly about the Queen taking a taxicab, but my dad's was absoutely lovely. So, here it is:

Letting Go

You gave me a poem,
a pebble warmed by your hand.

Words smoothed
by the reach of moonlight on water,
or the dappling of sunlight
on the shoulders of a girl.

Words that carried their own weight
polished by the use of others,
but in them, you set a spark
like a striking of flint
a fire set alight
passing from one to another.

What was certain,
what confirmed this transaction
was the light.

What's on my bedside table...

'After Claude' by Iris Owens
My lovely colleague A let me borrow this book, which I read over the weekend. It is rather fabulous and very funny, but I found the voice of the heroine, Harriet, slightly grating. As she descends into madness it becomes harder to empathise with her, and the final scenes of the book are disturbing and impossible to credit. Worth a read for the descriptions of 1970s outfits and hippies, though.

'Working the Room' by Geoff Dyer
A writer friend of mine was sent four hardback copies of this, and gave one to me. So far I've only read a few of the pieces; they're rather dense and humour-free, though interesting enough. Couldn't disagree with him more about Lorrie Moore's 'A Gate at the Stairs', though.

'A Girl Like You' by Gemma Burgess
This just came out and I read it in two sittings of about an hour each. It is chick-lit at its very best: funny, sassy, wise, cheerful. And, like Burgess' first book 'The Dating Detox', it's as much about friendship as boys. Which is lovely. The perfect thing to combat the winter / single blues.

Ovid's 'Metamorphoses' trans. Arthur Golding
My wonderful and very dear friend L gave me this book, and I am obsessed with it.
Orpheus to Hades and Persephone:
' All things to you belong,
And though wee, lingring for a whyle, our pageants do prolong,
Yit soone or late wee all to one abyding-place doo rome.
Wee haste us hither all; this place becomes our latest home....
The use of her but for a whyle I crave,
And if the Destnyes for my wyfe denye mee for to have
Releace, I fully am resolved for ever heere to dwell.'
Nuff said.

'The Golden Notebook' by Doris Lessing
This is the 'proper' book that I am reading alongside all the others (I usually have four or five on the go). It was recommended to me as a good girl-power book, which indeed it is proving to be. I am utterly in awe of Lessing's restrained emotions, her ability to describe entire characters through their gesticulations, her knowledge and insight. But it's pretty heavy going, and I can't quite get to grips with all the Communist stuff.