{"id":1289,"date":"2010-11-07T19:21:20","date_gmt":"2010-11-07T18:21:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1289"},"modified":"2011-03-07T14:49:51","modified_gmt":"2011-03-07T13:49:51","slug":"aldeburgh-poetry-festival-sunday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/?p=1289","title":{"rendered":"Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Sunday"},"content":{"rendered":"

some time on Sunday night<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m both exhausted and exhilarated by the end of proceedings<\/strong>.\u00a0 The final poets\u2019 dinner on Sunday night ends at about two in the morning.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If there has been a noticeable intensity at Aldeburgh compared to other poetry festivals, \u00a0it derives from one unusual component — no poet is ever invited back.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

This isn’t because in some ways they might have failed a quality threshold.\u00a0 A strict policy is in place only to invite those who’ve never read there before.\u00a0 This lends the proceedings an intensity they would not otherwise have.\u00a0 Poets have one shot at getting an Aldeburgh Festival reading right.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The same goes for the organisers.\u00a0 Every year they have to start at the bottom of the mountain and select new participants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

I’m reminded of those Buddhist monks who spend months laboriously making sand mandalas from small grains and then blow them to the wind.<\/p>\n

.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Sunday 18.00\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>Don Paterson\u2019s earlier lecture on Frost proves a terrific curtain raiser for the later reading by <\/strong>Marie Howe<\/strong><\/a>, as it is noticeable how many of her poems are framed as dialogues rather like Frost’s.\u00a0 The elegy for her missing brother is just one of many fine poems.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

She makes a striking figure on stage with her Botticelli hair.\u00a0 Indeed this year’s \u2018best poetic hair\u2019 prize is awarded equally between her and the long-locked Matthew Caley.\u00a0 I’d love them to do a shampoo ad double-act together, swinging their impressive tresses as they duetted on a country and western song, or pastoral eclogue.\u00a0 Who says that all poets are bald and need to wear berets?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Bill Manhire is less hirsute but still very effective<\/strong>.\u00a0 He concentrates on those works of his that lend themselves to public performance, with strong rhythm and rhyme.\u00a0 You might think that most \u00a0poets would follow this obviously sensible line.\u00a0 Or series of lines.\u00a0 But they don’t.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His elegy for Charles Causley is just the first of a string of emotionally intense poems, \u00a0hypnotically delivered.\u00a0 His voice has an attractive incantatory quality, whether listing his possessions as a small boy on New Zealand’s South Island, or howling at the moon down a lift shaft in Copenhagen.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The perfect choice to close the festival, internationalist, accomplished and passionate as it has been.<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Sunday 14.00<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I\u2019ve had 2 cups of 152\u2019s excellent cappuccino and so am ready for the highly caffeinated lecture on Robert Frost by Don Paterson<\/strong>.\u00a0 We are still at warp speed and every word is worth unravelling and playing back at 33 rpm.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The bulk of his lecture is on Frost\u2019s poem \u2018West-Running Brook\u2019.\u00a0 While some critics have decried the rhetorical staging of this as a dialogue between husband and wife\u00a0 as clumsy, Don admires what he sees as the resulting subplot of \u2018how people in love talk to one another\u2019.\u00a0 Perhaps naturally, given that he has just published his account of Shakespeare’s sonnets, he finds Shakespearean echoes in some lines \u2013 like \u2018And even substance lapsing unsubstantial\u2019, while also being drawn to Frost\u2019s nihilism and \u2018the aphoristic, demotic and plain-speaking nature of his verse which omits the extraneous, leaving itself nowhere to hide\u2019.\u00a0<\/p>\n

He sees Frost\u2019s \u00a0poetry as \u2018an intellectual and emotional provocation to which we are challenged to respond in kind\u2019. The same could be said of Don\u2019s rigorous criticism.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Not quite sure about his pronunciation of \u2018contraries\u2019 though. \u00a0Surely to rhyme with \u2018Compare-is\u2019? Readers with New England accents are invited to write in……..<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Sunday am<\/strong>\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 It\u2019s nine o\u2019clock in the morning and I\u2019m trying to move at speed to the White Lion to give my own talk on poetry and travel writing, together with Harry Clifton.\u00a0 Unfortunately the wind is so strong that for every two steps I take, I\u2019m one step back, and there isn\u2019t any music playing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\".
\n\u2018Fresh fish – anything fresher is still swimming,’ reads the logo on the side of the shack that sells them on the beach.\u00a0 I can\u2019t quite say the same about myself, but at least I haven\u2019t got a hangover, and Maggie at the Poets House has fed me plenty of black coffee and bacon sandwiches, so the brain has started to kick in.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Have 250 people gathered to hear us?\u00a0 Well not quite.\u00a0 But for\u00a0early Sunday morning it\u2019s a brave turnout, as Harry says.\u00a0 We talk about how when travelling some experiences seem to lend themselves either to prose or poetry;\u00a0 of how Byron was in some ways an early travel writer, appealing to the stay-at-home British public ( who had to stay at home \u2013 it was the middle of the Napoleonic Wars) with his tales of Mediterranean pleasures;\u00a0 of \u2018The Odyssey\u2019 as the first travel poem;\u00a0 of the celebration and exhilaration of travel but also of its own concomitant hangover, jet lag:<\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

Jet Lag Blues<\/span><\/p>\n

Two o\u2019clock in the morning, punched
\n<\/span>inside out, \u00a0jet-lagged \u00a0from Los Angeles
\n<\/span>via London, face pressed against<\/span><\/p>\n

the pillow with unnatural gravity,
\n<\/span>like a safe-breaker listening
\n<\/span>for the combination to give,<\/span><\/p>\n

I feel the ground much closer,
\n<\/span>almost moving,
\n<\/span>and want to twist the world\u2019s tectonic<\/span><\/p>\n

spine, the way a chiropractor snaps
\n<\/span>a patient\u2019s back, so I no longer lie
\n<\/span>divided on my own fault line.<\/span><\/p>\n

.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Aldeburgh Poetry Festival blog is sponsored by Writers\u2019 Centre Norwich,a literature development agency for the East of England running workshops, competitions, events and more. <\/em>www.writerscentrenorwich.org.uk<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

some time on Sunday night\u00a0\u00a0 I’m both exhausted and exhilarated by the end of proceedings.\u00a0 The final poets\u2019 dinner on Sunday night ends at about two in the morning.\u00a0 If there has been a noticeable intensity at Aldeburgh compared to other poetry festivals, \u00a0it derives from one unusual component — no poet is ever invited […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,76,1],"tags":[77,78,131],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-festivals","category-poetry","category-uncategorized","tag-aldeburgh","tag-don-paterson","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1293,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions\/1293"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thewhiterock.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}