I haven't updated this for months, actual, real, months. Hi, June, how are you! July, so sorry to have missed you out, have a biscuit or a strawberry split.
I mean, not that many people (well, anyone, really) reads this blog, probably largely because I, er, never update it.
Anyway, I'm not going to write an entire blog post about not-blogging, because that would be disgusting. Instead, I'm going to have a moan about UCAS, sorry, and then talk about some rather lovely poetry that I have been reading. If you want, you can skip the boring UCAS moaning. Just cover your eyes and scroll down until you see a happier paragraph and read that instead.
So, UCAS. I mean, hopefully I'll get into a university and go there and it'll be lovely and jolly and everything, but I hate that I have to go through this whole... process. I mean, the personal statement. How exactly am I supposed to sell myself in this thing?! I mean, sure, I love reading modern poetry and I'm hopefully going to get more involved in less-modern poetry this summer (Hi, Chaucer! I see you did Troilus and Criseyde! That's very exciting) and yeah, I like Middle English, but, um, I don't know. I don't read much other than poetry and early twentieth-century novels and I'm trying to work on it, I really am. But I still haven't read a lot of the stuff that I feel I'm supposed to have read.
But then... I figure after it's all over, I'll hopefully be able to go to university for three years. And to be honest, that's pretty much my entire goal in life. There is no job that I particularly want. I do not dream of earning 40k a year. All I want to do, really, is sit around in a shitty flat, eat rubbish food and spend a lot of time reading and talking to other people that like reading. Have you read Forster's The Longest Journey, O hypothetical reader? Well, the beginning of that is amazing. They're sitting around at university and discussing philosophy and being all witty. Once that bit's over, the book makes me despair (I think I still like it, although the middle section is pretty much the most depressing thing ever) but that opening is just amazing. You know that really cheesy film, Starter for Ten? Yeah, when James Mcavoy sits there and talks about wanting to learn things at uni, it sounds stupid, but that's what I want. It's not so much that I want to go to uni so that I can have a degree or anything, I just want to go. This is probably a pretty silly ambition to admit to, and a lot of people seem to think that university's just about getting a job. I don't want to go so that I can train for a job. I honestly don't care what salary I end up with, as long as it's enough to rent a flat somewhere a bit more interesting than Ipswich.
Maybe this whole thing is why I'm scared by the whole UCAS deal. Because what if I get it wrong? Hopefully I won't, though. Even if I do, I can always take a gap year. I know I have options. It's still a bit scary, though, and that's not going to change. The whole idea of university's a bit terrifying, but hopefully also a bit wonderful, too. I just hope that I meet some interesting people and that I get to learn new things, wherever I end up going. It's all I can really ask for, I suppose.
Sorry, that UCAS rant turned out to be a rather pathetic musing on university in general. Here's the promised stuff about poetry:
1) Along with Emily (she's on my blogroll!) I visited The Poetry Library in London towards the end of last month. It was very nice, although they wouldn't issue me with a card, and I read whole collections by Lavinia Greenlaw and Deryn Rees-Jones, both of which were basically amazing. It's strange; for a while all of my favourite poets were men, while my favourite novelists were largely women, but it seems to have evened out now (which I'm glad about) - the most exciting collections I've read recently have been by these two and Sarah Maguire, Frances Leviston (not really a collection, but a pamphlet, Lighter), Michael Donaghy and Frank O'Hara. I suppose throughout the centuries there's been such a long male tradition in poetry, a tradition that still seems to continue now (while most of the winners in young poet competitions seem to be female, the situation seems often reversed when it reaches older generations, although obviously not always) but I'm glad that this seems to breaking down and there's more of just a general tradition of poetry, a tradition that becomes more exciting when it's broken and spat on and someone tries to do something new.
2) I also visited the Scottish Poetry Library. I'm just back from holiday in Scotland, and while in Edinburgh I obviously had to go. They even issued me with a borrowing card (my Mum handily provided me with proof of address) and so I have Frances Leviston's previously mentioned Lighter, the anthology Ten Hallam Poets (both from Mews Press) and some anthology of urban poetry from Singapore (No Other City?). The librarians there were really nice and helpful (I managed to read Alice Howlett's pamphlet before it had been catalogued, which was very nice. It's called No Stars So Lovely, and it's great). Even though it gave me a headache (as libraries tend to do, oh dear) I simply took a break (in Starbucks, of all places) and then went back. I wish there was one of these poetry libraries near me. Ipswich is pretty much the worst place to live for poetry, except when it's Aldeburgh festival time.
3) I'm going to the Aldeburgh Festival for the Saturday and Sunday! Various events: readings, masterclasses, a free workshop and some craft talks. It should be a blast; it was very nice last year, although I felt conspicuously young.
4) I had fun writing poems in Scotland, including one that's about turning eighteen, alcopops, slush puppies and not actually liking alcohol. I also wrote one that was basically me bitching about Edinburgh, which is actually a very nice place, it just made me unbelievably tired. I think I prefer Glasgow, although I didn't write a poem about Glasgow.
5) In Glasgow I bought Magma poetry magazine, which I've often wanted but never really felt that I can justify as it's expensive. I did this time, though, and I love it. Roddy Lumsden wrote a really interesting article about what's new in poetry, which I really liked; he talked about how young poets at the moment seem to want to read poets that are looser and weirder than those that emerged in the early 90s such as Armitage and Duffy. I'd largely agree with that; while I admire both of these poets, too much of their work at once makes me feel a bit dull, lifeless. This probably also has something to do with studying them both at GCSE, but the point still stands. I'd rather read Frank O'Hara (Roddy mentions him in the article), Muldoon, Mahon, Greenlaw, Dooley, Donaghy, Koch, The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poets, various Modernists and French Symbolists and all that sort of stuff.
6) I listened to a recording of Michael
Donaghy in The Scottish Poetry Library and it was amazing. I'm now listening to him on
The Poetry Archive and it's not really the same - I think that you should all grab the biggest fuck-off headphones you can find, plug them in, listen to him or anyone else on the website and just, I don't know, try and find something that you love.
7) It's almost half past midnight and I've been writing this for far too long. In summary: I want to go to university and I like reading poetry. If you've actually read all of this then you deserve a smoothie and some chocolate, but instead, have a poem by John
Berryman:
John Berryman
Sonnet 117
All we were going strong last night this time,
the mots were flying & the frozen daiquiris
were downing, supine on the floor lay Lise
listening to Schubert grievous & sublime,
my head was frantic with a following rime:
it was a good evening, an evening to please,
I kissed her in the kitchen--ecstasies--
among so much good we tamped down the crime.
The weather's changing. This morning was cold,
as I made for the grove, without expectation,
some hundred Sonnets in my pocket, old,
to read her if she came. Presently the sun
yellowed the pines & my lady came not
in blue jeans & a sweater. I sat down & wrote.
