In and Out.

Just popping by to say I've popped up a new poem called Catch. It was written just now in one draft in the course of about ten minutes. It's about having sporty friends and losing them. And playing catch, of course. Now, back to work I go.

Hiatus.

I'm doing a lot of work at the moment, and this has already caused me to minimise my activity on here. That's going to continue for the foreseeable future, so I thought I'd better raise my head above the parapet, admit the continuing absence (to myself as much as to anyone else), and tie up a couple of loose ends. 

First of all, I think I have twice promised to post some new poems up here, and on both occasions failed. A bit of serendipity now compels me to make good on that promise. My poem 'Time and The Sea' won second prize in the Rhyme and Reason poetry competition run by the Iain Rennie Hospice. It's only a small competition, but I like the work of the judge, Gerard Benson, very much, and entries are accepted from across the country, so I feel entitled to experience a teensy tiny iota of validation.

However, it also served to clarify a few things in my head. The fact is, I don't really see poetry as being the area I want to explore. As a reader, I love it to bits. But as my love of poetry has increased over the years, my sense of my own suitability to write it has diminished proportionately. I am convinced that writing good poetry demands an obsessional, microscopic devotion which I don't naturally have and which it would run against the grain of my nature to contrive. My temperament is too superficial. So, while I love poetry, and am massively pleased that someone somewhere whose opinion I respect thinks I've done something which is sort of alright-ish, I know in my heart that this is only the first step on a path up the near-vertical, slipshod shale of the Parnassian foothills - and it is a path which I probably shouldn't take. 

So, yes, I'm delighted, and I remain incapable of not writing poetry. But I am happy for it to be a private occupation, a dirty and secretive habit which I nonetheless take very seriously and from which I derive much (naughty) pleasure. It is in this spirit that I offer the poems 'Pulse', 'Vanishing Point', 'Opposable Thumb', 'Mobile', 'God', 'Mirror Stage', 'Hunter's Moon' and 'The Clouds'. 

The other thing to mention is that this competition also had a section for prose entries . I didn't place in this, while my wife (talented sort that she is) placed third. Despite losing, however, I still quite like my entry, so I've put that up in the prose section.

It's called Red Shift, and it probably requires some explanation. The overall theme of the competition was time, so I devised a massively over-complicated, possibly incomprehensible hypothetical conceit about an observation post at the farthest edge of the known universe at the end of time.

My preliminary supposition, for which I have absolutely no basis in fact and which I would love to have corrected by someone who knows about this sort of thing, is that when entropy (i.e. heat death of the universe, itself a contentious theory) sets in, time would break down from the outside-in. Hence this guy, as the human being farthest out from the centre (far out might have been a good title, actually), would be the first person to experience all the weirdness arising from time collapsing.

That's how the idea started. Then, however, I got all excited by my reading, and particularly by the principle of redshift, in which time and gravity are thought to dilate as they approach an event horizon such as a black hole. Light emitted from beyond the event horizon can never reach the people on the other side, so I postulated that, if the observer could not communicate out then his superiors wouldn't be able to communicate in, effectively isolating him in a discrete envelope of space-time. I also presupposed that shit would be pretty messed up even before the 'event', what with being so far out from the centre - hence the bit about supernovae recurring (which is meant to imply that time is jumping back and forth).

Of course, all of this science is implicit in the story, as there's simply no room for exposition of that kind (there was a 500 word limit and, besides, it would have been boring). Finally a message arrives but, doh, it's a message that has fallen through a convenient worm hole from another era which is not intended for the protagonist and therefore merely confronts him with the futility of everything, ever.

Well, there you have it. It's far too complicated, I pulled most of my hair out trying to balance expository needs with dramatic ones, and no one liked it. Enjoy!

Port-a-Pet

A gigantic blonde teenager sits diagonally opposite me. Her pink-blonde hair is clogged with dreadlocks and she is dressed from head to toe in black, including a Marilyn Manson hooded top and a pair of heavy, decorated biker boots. One of her eyes is blind and staring and the skin around it is a frozen slab of scar tissue, fissured with white stars of twisted skin. In her hands she is holding a small cardboard box labelled 'Port-a-Pet' in which sleeps her hamster. Once the train is moving she opens the box and then proceeds to gentle the hamster for the remainder of the journey. She does not think there is anything unusual about this because she long ago accepted that she must take love wherever she can find it.

Micro-Theory 3: What the fuck's a rhythm stick?

More specifically, why should you hit me with it? Well, isn't a rhythm stick perhaps a metaphor for that feeling of release and euphoria you get when listening to music, especially rhythmical music? It's about the sense of gratitude you have to the composer or performer who makes you feel that marvellous freedom; it's about how exciting music is, how sexy and - critically - how universal, transcending frontiers physical and mental to twat us into ecstasy. After all, the lyrics take pains to point out that seemingly every person on earth has the capacity to hit Mr Dury with their particular stick - and he'll love them for it, just as we love him for bashing us. So the song is about music. But we shouldn't forget that it is also a wonderful, indirect tribute to the magical properties of language, because without all those wonderful rhymes ('In the wilds of Borneo, and the vineyards of Bordeaux', etc.), we wouldn't get the message. Bloody Clever Trevor...

What's the use of literature?

Priyamvada Gopal, Dean of Churchill College, Cambridge, and Senior Lecturer to the English faculty, appeared on yesterday's Start The Week to publicise her appearance on an RSL lecture entitled 'What's the Use of Literature?' and explain why she believes the Coalition's education cuts will impoverish the humanities. Regrettably, her argument seemed to revolve in ever-decreasing circles of solipsism around the idea that reading English is useful because close reading, comparing texts and appreciating the nuances of interpretation is useful. She didn't at any point tell us what these skills are good for, and it wasn't hard to imagine the collective sigh of 'so what?' going up around the country. The whole thing felt like a missed opportunity to draw attention to something both important and, to my mind, relatively obvious. What she should have said is that the abilities the humanities foster - independent thought, rational analysis, synthesis of information, considered judgement and eloquent argument - are vital components of a civilised society. Indeed, I think the humanities are the only manmade construct which holds equal sway alongside our inherent capacity for love in the difficult and strange process of civilising ourselves. Without the humanities you wouldn't have democratic government, civil rights, free speech, religion and the freedom to reject it, the welfare state, the civil rights movement, Radio 4 or The Beatles. As for the person who sneers and says, 'yeah, but so what?' - well, the plain fact is that he wouldn't be able to say that if it weren't for the humanities, because dialectic (the resolution of disagreement through dialogue) wouldn't exist without Socrates. So science cannot flourish without the humanities, and vice versa. For example, a scientist working on stem cell research is doing important but controversial work. Now, he doesn't need an English graduate to sit there and tell him whether what he's doing is right or wrong, but his thinking on ethics is nonetheless informed by every book he's ever read and every teacher he's ever had. And the degree of ethical consideration invested in our actions is the barometer of how humane, equal and emancipated a person, nation or species is. Furthermore the skills which humanities teach are a useful commodity in their own right. Without them we wouldn't have the tertiary economy which is vital to a nation like Britain with its dwindling agriculture and industry. Finally, a novel or a poem is the vessel which conveys our essential humanity: these are the artefacts which teach us to empathise with others, to remember and to dream. Of course, a dream doesn't have any inherent value. But that's the point of dreams: they're free, and, being free, priceless.