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Sally writes on Maurice Lindsay who died on April 30.
Back in the late nineteen-forties, after an apocryphal tea party with T S Eliot in Edinburgh, Maurice had started
the first series of Poetry Scotland publications. In it he published many Scottish poets including Hugh MacDiarmid,
for Maurice had seen the light regarding modern Scottish culture and indeed contributed hugely to it, through the
Saltire Society and many other means. When we resurrected the title Poetry Scotland in 1997, I rather sheepishly
invited Maurice to contribute some poems. That was the beginning of a correspondence that lasted the twelve years
almost until his death. Many a handwritten poem from Maurice lurks in my files, some used as occasional pieces
in Poetry Scotland, some for the two books we published by him - Worlds Apart being followed by Looking Up
Where Heaven Isn't in the same style. The latter title inevitably dwelt on the ending of his life but he was not
finished with poems - he wanted yet another book after that one. There were not enough new poems, so we
compromised with a Poetry Scotland Dedicated Issue shared with James Aitchison, the two having been poetic
buddies for decades.
When Maurice had retired from his job and no longer had the services of a typist, not only letters but poems
also arrived in his flamboyantly more and more illegible hand. It was probably the worst handwriting I ever saw,
but I prided myself on being able to read it, and at times even helped James Aitchison to decipher lines from
the poems. I think I always got them right, helped by my increasing understanding of his prosody, the way
he would grammatise and even the way he would think.
He went absolutely his own way as a poet, preferring sonnets and quietly humorous observations, and as
he became older, memories, to shape his work. He was staunchly anti-religious, hardworking, and utterly
Scottish. I felt his outlook was one of great integrity. I was privileged to learn so much about his poetry
at a time of his life when he was not so accessible. Simply because I liked him so much, I also made
firm friends with his wife Joyce who survives him. This is a personal memoir, and in any case I had little
access to the circumstances of his earlier life, though I did read the second part of his autobiography in
typescript, which is, I believe, deposited in the Mitchell Library.
Sally Evans, May 3rd 2009.
There is an excellent obituary by Lesley Duncan, in the Herald on line here:
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/obituaries/display.var.2505561.0.maurice_lindsay.php
[Colin adds that he has learned so much from Sally and Ian over the years, and is grateful for their continuing friendship and support.]
Rowena Love, Morelle Smith and Sally Evans at Shotton, North Wales, where they were the guests
of Maureen Weldon and Onya Wick for the launch of Snappy Day, the Callander Poetry Weekend CD.
Juliana Geer and Etta Dunn, also on the CD, attended too. The reading included prizewinners
from the Flintshire Poetry Competition in English and Welsh.
Also in the picture is Aled Lewis Evans,
Welsh poet and broadcaster, who was the adjudicator of the Welsh poems.
And here's the CD. More details soon on the diehard page.
Not everyone has had time to notice it, but the Poetry Magazine situation in Scotland has changed considerably in the last fifteen years or so. Magazines used to be the basic plank of poetry, not just of poetry publishing. They were more important than readings, festivals or meeting places. The internet did not exist. Magazines were produced in the most cost effective way for their time, and were mostly of "parish magazine" format, fat folded A4 wadges stapled to A5, with boldy printed card covers. Akros, Cencrastus, Chapman, Edinburgh Review, Gairm, Lallans, Lines, Markings, New Writing Scotland, Northwords, and West Coast Magazine all looked much of a muchness, Cencrastus being A4 and all the rest A5. Some of the major names have gone, (Akros, Lines, Cencrastus and Gairm) and what are left have divided into heavily subsidised book-sized heavies (Chapman, Edin Review, Markings and NWS) , broadsheet types (Northwords and Poetry Scotland - at ten years down the line, still one of the newer mags) . Smaller circulation desktop enterprise accounts for the remaining "parish mags" including the newer titles, Zed20, Chanticleer and Fras.
These are big changes, which have happened alongside other big changes in poetry. But as to the printed side of things, the old magazine format is still with us, but it has turned into the contemporary poetry pamphlet.
Everyone is using pamphlets. diehard has started its windfall series, based on the fatter end of the parish magazine style. Our webmaster Colin, in his role with the Tyne and Esk writers, has been seeing poetry pamphlets through his own Calder Wood Press and other imprints. And pamphlets flood in annually to the Callum MacDonald pamphlet competition, run by Tessa Ransford and the National Library.
The name of the Callum MacDonald competition gives us one justification for pamphlets. Callum MacDonald himself was a tireless poetry publisher, without whom Scottish twentieth century poetry publishing would barely have existed.
This competition has helped to legitimise self-published poetry, now a major option for publication for poetry from the highest quality downwards. Sheena Blackhall is reaching her huge Aberdeen audience for her Doric poems by this method. Good, experienced poets such as Walter Perrie who have been sidelined from the establishment's agenda, have also made use of self-publishing. As a medium for publishing, for getting your work out to readers, the pamphlet is as powerful as the parish magazine always was.
Another factor has emerged: the Poetry Book Society in England, which has always held quarterly book competitions, now has a pamphlet section in their competitions. This has produced a spate, in England, of lavishly produced pamphlets, which, in the absence of compelling content, remind of nothing so much as poncy theatre programmes. This is itself a bad development, because the good pamphlet is ad hoc, it is designed to carry its content as effectively and simply and cost-effectively as possible.
Luckily for us all, there is somewhere else we can go, and somewhere else we do go - the internet. Websites and webzines are absolutely ideal for poetry. They can do what the old parish-mag magazine did so well: link the poets, whose pamphlets separate them from their poetic-historical backgrounds . We need to know the connections between writers, the poetry movements, the ginger groups, the mechanisms through which the whole field of poetry moves on. We need to have an overview, an understanding of origins, which are obscured by a publishing system where it is each poet for him or herself, advertising and selling their own work without it being appended to other work, as happens properly in magazines. This lack of connection to base, also favours a poetry-competition attitude to poetry, which assumes that poems can be graded in a vacuum and that "party tricks" of language are more important than, shall we call it, the poetic quest.
The movement from magazines to pamphlets has come about largely because of the cost of hard print. Individual poets can be held responsible for selling (or giving away) their own pamphlets, and they will pay for them more readily than they will for shared publication. Confusing fragmentation is the result.
But if hard print is costly, the internet wins out again.
And at that, internet essays being properly short and concise, I must stop. Comments welcome.
Sally Evans
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a discussion of amateur, professional, popular,
beginners, establishment and disestablishment poetry.
A short rhymed poem has appeared in our village paper,
its subject the rare Barrow's Goldeneye which visited
Callander this year. The poem was unremarkable except
for its last two lines:
Return, splendid Barrow, return here again
Return splendid Barrow, again and again.
The writer of this poem is a poet in the sense of
being the poet of this (published) poem. But by what
other standard? Whether or not a beginner, he is an
amateur. He has responded to an emotion without
showing much regard for technique, nor for fashion.
His evident liking for his final phrase, shown in its
repeat, is a perfect example of "you should leave out
your favourite line." Barrow is an adjective (the noun
is Goldeneye) and it is ambiguous. Is he asking for
his wheelbarrow back? And what about splendid? The
Goldeneye is cute, interesting, pretty, attractive,
brave, braw, but hardly splendid. I suspect it is the
poem that the writer thinks is splendid.
This poet is entitled to his writing and the published
spot he has found, but I would not like his kind of
work to be confused with that of PS contributors. PS
poets are not amateur in this sense. They are
professional in that they study poetry, read it,
consider carefully how to write it, try to assess
their own work, reduce faults, abandon failures, and
aim to serve poetry as truly as they can. Few of them
are professional in the sense that they live by their
writing, though our ranks have included Paul McCartney
and Les Murray, John Hegley, Kenneth Whyte, Marylin
Hacker, Jackie Kay, Edwin Morgan, Tom Leonard and
George Bruce, all of whom were solicited (and some of
whom were paid). Many others are professional in the
sense that they spend most of their time writing (and
lecturing, speaking or teaching), have made it their
profession in the sense of work activity, would like
it to pay them, and are quite often paid (even if
generally with public money).
Poetry Scotland publishes beginners, but they have to
be very good beginners, or it is perhaps their best
poem. And they pretty well have to be Scottish. It is
the Scottish poets we are serving firstly, though we
welcome proficient colleagues from the rest of UK. The
UK postal area restricts the broadsheet but not the
website. They have to be beginners who seem to have a
grasp of the basics, a natural ability, and a
willingness to learn. You can tell by their poems, you
can tell by their approaches.
Poetry Scotland often publishes establilshment poets.
After all, poets have to work their way up the
establishment, and people who were not established
throughout much of their working lives can suddenly
become so. Sorley Maclean suddenly became known after
a reading in Oxford when he was about sixty, and Edwin
Morgan too has shot to well-deserved prominence in the
last two decades or so. Poetry can bring late fame.
And the more confident established poets do send to us
from time to time. It's the ones who are afraid to be
thought dabbling in less elite waters who give us a
miss, I sometimes think.
What is popular poetry? I dont say it is
letters-to-the-editor poetry. That is the vanity
press! It is fun poetry, enjoy a joke poetry.
Occasionally a popular poet becomes an established
poet - Betjeman, Byron and of course Burns. More often
they hold a place on the sideline (Robert Service, Pam
Ayres). Sometimes they sing and play (Bob Dylan and
many of the pop musicians). Poetry Scotland often
publishes fun poetry. Sheena Blackhall comes to mind
as our most consistent supplier of fun poems, but you'll
have noticed others. Des Dillon's Change at
Preston was one of the most popular poems we published
in our earlier issues. It was also popluar in the
sense I speak of.
And disestablishment poetry. This is an important
division, because after all, there is a sense in which
writing that obeys rules is not creative writing at
all. Among the most disestablishment we have published
are Steve Sneyd, Stanley Robertson, maybe Nicky
Melville, probably Beth Junor, and Niall Gordan. But
you'll think of others.
Sally Evans
We can't all write Homer. We can't all write a tiny,
jewel-like haiku. And we all can't write villanelles.
There is one outstanding, archetypal example of a
villanelle - everyone's villanelle (though the form
was invented in France and may suit the French
language).
It is Dylan Thomas' Do Not Go Gentle. Read it here.
http://www.bigeye.com/donotgo.htm
Why is Do not Go Gentle so good? Because it is infused
with passion, raging, because the poet is angry with
the gods about his father's death, because he brings
all he has to this poem, and because he has with
immense instinct found a couplet with many rhymes and
a balancing opposing rhyme-bank. How night opposes
day, and light and bright, flight and sight and right
all oppose night, while pray goes with night, but
green bay and gay (particularly) oppose
night....'they' might have been this villanelle's
obligatory weaker rhyme, although standing as it does
for "all wise men" it could be seen as the hosts of
the dead, which is hardly weak.
We write poems using phrases as well as words (London
poetry sometimes forgets this) and the phrases that
complete this magnificent poem also have resonance
that contribute to the poem's compulsive power: rage
against, you my father, their words had no forked
lightning...grieved it on its way...
A magnificent poem in a magnificent and difficult
form.
All forms have their particular matter they are best
suited to - Limericks are for funnies, sonnets are for
argument, haiku are for verbal photography.
Villanelles are for obsession, anger, frustration, a
change-ringing of bells on a theme that wont let the
poet alone. The form involves difficult handling of
repetition, something we're not very used to in
contemporary English Language poetry. The French
tradition abounds in repetition, so does medieval
Latin (Timor mortis conturbat me) and so of course
does song.
Precisely because the villanelle is such a repetitive
form, and so difficult to pull off, poets often use it
as an exercise. That is OK so long as we realise it is
an exercise, and we will rarely succeed: poetry should
certainly involve aspiration (I dont mean breathing).
Whether your aspiration is completing a perfect
sonnet, doing a renga on the Roman Wall, writing a
poem a day for a month, you must go with it, and let
others go with theirs.
So if you do want to write a villanelle, build up
rhyme banks on your theme, listen to phrases, feel the
rhythm, be ready for your inspiration when it comes,
and get angry. Engineering? It's architecture.
My best villanelle is an early poem, in a book best
forgotten (as MacCaig wished of his earliest books).
SallyE
Page last updated:
May 4, 2009