MONDAY #1

(By the time I post this it'll be Tuesday morning, but let's pretend Monday stretches until sunrise, like in Somalia where 0:00 is when the sun rises and not the middle of the night. Cool idea, right? O I could just admit that I only had this idea when Monday was mostly over.)

I've decided to try and do a post here every Monday about good things. Monday can seem like an annoying, shitty day; the weekend's gone, and there's another boring week ahead. So I've decided to take a bit of a cue from Gala Darling, who does a list of lovely things every Thursday (TiLT) and instead do a similar sort of list ever Monday, of awesome things that Monday cannot ruin.

I can't think of a snappy name for it. How about just MONDAY as a title? Right. Anyway, on with the list.


MY IPOD. I know, I know. Everyone else either already has one and has had one for ages, or thinks they're lame and not worth getting excited over. I haven't had an mp3 player since May or so, and let me tell you, I much prefer having one. Sure, I could act cool and 1990s carrying my old rubbish CD player on the bus, but every time it moves it stops for a second and there's only so many times you want to listen to the same couple of CDs that you can carry about with you. I like giving my life a lame soundtrack, you know? I also like listening to music on headphones, and I haven't even had headphones for a while, since I tend to buy books instead of other things that I need when I have money (which is not often). I also like watching television shows on my ipod - I know it's weird, since the screen's so small... but it's just nice.

• THE BELIEVER. I'm not sure if it's cool to like this or not since it probably screams pretentious or lame-hipster, but I love it - it's always so interesting, even when I know nothing about the articles it's got in it, and they're long and detailed and the design of it is so gorgeous. I have four issues, and they're expensive for me to get but I want more. They're my favourite magazines, more like literary journals, and I need more, more more more. I also want to start reading McSweeney's, but jesus is it expensive. If anyone feels like making a stranger a generous gift, I would be yours for a subscription to either of these.
• BLEAK HOUSE. So I had this on my reading list for university and it seemed too long and too dull and so I moaned about it all the time, barely read any of it, and was generally an annoying idiot. Then it got to about a week ago and I realised I should really finish it. I read the last 600+ pages over the last week, like 200 or so yesterday, and it's just my favourite thing now. Clearly the best novel I've read so far from my Victorian Literature reading list, and it's just brilliant. All (or most of) the characters are fully-rounded, distinct, interesting and either funny, sweet, horrible or sad. Often a mix.
  
• PLANNING. I start university in less than a week now, Monday the 6th, and it's all incredibly exciting. I need to tidy my room here and start getting my stuff together. I need to buy things to take with me. My room will be much less cluttered than my room here, it'll be five flights of stairs up and it'll be warm and have a window seat. There are massive pinboards on the walls. I honestly just cannot wait to be in it!

• AUTUMN. It's here now. It's getting colder so I can wear more layers and huddle up in my duvets (yes, I have two - shut up, okay?!) and it gets dark early which I like and it's just generally great. Soon it'll be time to wear my winter coat, and I love my winter coat so I am generally happy about this. Bonfire night is only a month and a few days away.

Other stuff is awesome too, but I think I'll end the post now. If anyone is reading this then... sorry it's not Monday any more, but feel free to reply to this with stuff that helps take away the midweek blues, if you want? Or with whatever!

READING LIST

I'm writing a post now because I said that I would in my previous post and if I left that as the most recent one then I would just confuse everyone since I make a big deal out of how I don't want people to read just that and then hate me for being inane, self-deprecating in a quite annoying way and ultimately pointless. Since you shouldn't really have a blog just so that you can update it with posts about how rubbish you are at blogging.

I AM DOING IT AGAIN. Wow. Okay, moving on swiftly: yesterday I got my third reading list emailed to me. I think this is my final reading list for Michaelmas (for the unindoctrinated, this is the autumn/winter term at my university) since there are three papers so three reading lists, while terrifying, seems to make sense.

I got my first of the three just over a month ago now, on about the 17th or 18th of August (I think). The three papers I'm doing are Victorian Literature, An Introduction To Literary Studies (or something, it's got a name like that and it's about theory and criticism I think) and Medieval Literature, where we get to choose between Middle and Old English. I'm going with Old English, I think, but I don't decide until I've done a couple of classes in each.

There's little point in keeping it massively secret so I might as well say where I'm going, which is Oxford. The reading lists, together and separately, are all rather formidable; if I was going to read all the primary Victorian texts alone, disregarding all the other stuff, then we'd be looking at a book every two days or something from this point on. I have not read as many so far as I would have liked. I am currently working through Bleak House... I kind of like it, actually, but it is not going to be finished in two days.

I'm liking the look of the lit theory, although I haven't really done much reading for that yet (since the Victorian list goes on about everything being vital and the theory list being recommended for dipping into I think I've decided to prioritise) and I'm also really, sadly excited about the medieval stuff, possibly largely because the other day I remembered studying Chaucer's The Miller's Tale and decided to send friends who aren't Middle English-nerds some funny bits of the tale, such as when Absolon works out that he didn't kiss Alison's face because women don't have beards and when he keeps bringing her all the food and money in a really hilarious, yet stupid, way. My friends were bemused, I was laughing. I want to do Old English because I hear all the cool kids know dead languages, and also it may be my only chance to lean about the hronrad or the other cultural references that other friends of mine sometimes make to anglo-saxon while I desperately try to look like I'm totally up on my medieval knowledge. Anon, anon, anon. See what I did there? I'll be writing blog posts in runes in no time, just you wait.

Know what else I've discovered? I do not get on with most of the Victorians. My Mum (who I promised I'd be in bed hours ago - sorry, Mum! I just wasn't tired!) lovea the Victorians for some weird reasons of her own and I know a lot of people actually like the Bronte sisters three (top points if you can spot the cultural reference there, I'm on fire tonight with my indie cred) and all the other people who wrote about governesses trapped in their own biblical, fiery nightmare but I don't want to sleep with Heathcliff or Mr Rochester (which a disturbing amount of people do, if the number of facebook groups devoted to them is any indication) and would rather not read anything where every page has to contain at least three references to hell or fire (or preferably both, which a healthy amount of good piety thrown in) for the author to be able to move on. OKAY, YOU GOT ME. Jane Eyre isn't quite that bad. I was exaggerating for comic effect. I don't think it worked though, sorry.

I do like what I've read of Hopkins, largely because he was really weird and doesn't read like yr typical Victorian - there's all that sprung rhythm (which I still don't really understand, although I also don't really get how people spot whether something's iambic or trochaic etc., so really, I'm a bit fucked when it comes to analysing the metrical aspect of poetry) and wanting to have sex with Jesus and all that other stuff. I prefer him to the other Victoriana that I have read, although, as I said, I am enjoying Bleak House. I'm not sure if I'd be able to analyse Dickens though, there's too much there! In this way maybe i'll be better at the Brontes. I guess I will find out with time.

My problem is that I finish a book by one of the Victorians and then want to read something different - I generally have quite a short attention span and so I don't want to just read the same sort of stuff over and over. I got a Glyn Maxwell book that I ordered second-hand in the post today, his debut collection, Tales of the Mayor's Son. It's incredible, he's got to be one of my favourite poets ever.

I start university in 16 days, or something. It now seems quite close, although loads of my friends go tomorrow (/today, since it's half two in the morning now) and so by comparison it is an age. I am going to bed now. Whine at me in the comments about how pointless I am, you kno you want to.

BACK BACK BACK

I just looked at my little list of blogs that I have on blogger. This one has not been updated since March. That's so stupid and pathetic and I'm a bit sad about it. Sorry if my sentences are basic, it is almost 2am and I am typing in the semi-dark.

I don't know why I stopped updating this. Actually, that's a lie; I do know why I stopped - I never really thought I had enough to say about books or education and thought that if I did write anything then it'd just be stupid and no one would want to read it anyway. Which is a STUPID reason for not updating a blog - I'm not writing this for money, am I? I'm hardly writing it to try and reach loads of people at once or anything. I mean, let's face it, how many people want to read what I write? I'm 18, socially awkward, am listening to REM on my macbook at almost 2am on a Friday night and idly wondering about starting a poem. I mean, I don't think I'm a terrible person or anything, I just don't think I'm going to be massively interesting.

WHAT A WAY TO START MY FIRST POST IN ABOUT 6 MONTHS. I THINK I JUST ANNOUNCED THAT I BORE MYSELF. WELL.

RIGHT. Anyway I'm going to finish this post here because I do actually have something to write about and if I do it in the same post as all my "lol i'm just boring aren't i" whining then people are probably already annoyed at me or whatever and if I update immediately after this post with a nice post that has some actual content then by the time they get to this they might not care so much. WOW MY LOGIC IS EXCELLENT TONIGHT. WELL DONE CHARLOTTE.

Pomegranate

Some of you (okay, okay, let's face it, only people I know read this, so, all of you) know that I am the webmistress (is there a gender-neutral term I can use? WEBMONARCH, maybe? No?) of the poetry ezine, http://www.pomegranate.me.uk. In case anyone I don't know has stumbled upon this blog (hi!) then I'll give a brief run-down: it's an online poetry journal for writers under 30, published quarterly. It's been running since last autumn.

Last night and this morning, I finished coding and uploading issue 3: time. The next issue's (optional, always stress the optional) theme is "Suck", which is a bit different and quite fun, I think. Anyway, the coding is... I'm not going to lie and say enjoyable or anything, but it wasn't hard - just a bit mundane, because I'm a bit obsessive and code by hand, which means a lot of manual tags for linebreaks. This issue is great, though - 20 poems, 5 articles, an interview and a great cover photo. It's always really exciting getting an issue up, and I'm still on a bit of a high from uploading this one - it's out there for people to see! Yes!

For some reason before I started this blog post I thought that talking about coding Pom would make a satisfying post on its ow. I WAS WRONG. Obviously I forgot that no one actually wants to hear me rambling on about tags and so on. Be glad that I have remembered.

In a way, though, I think the internet's quite bad for me. I always end up spending my evenings refreshing facebook and on the forums - I mean, I'll read as well, but I won't get as much done as I would if the internet wasn't an option. But then, the stuff I do isn't quite as useless as it was a few years ago, when I was just keen on doing rubbish pixel art - I do read a lot of poetry on the internet, and without it I'd never even have really got involved in poetry at all. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. Hopefully I'll get better at juggling my time - I've been reading a lot recently (largely Neil Gaiman and China Mieville) and I'm hoping to read a lot of Auden over the next few weeks, because I'm sort of on the cusp of realising why people like him so much and I'd like to properly understand.

Mmm, anyway this is becoming one of those posts where I just sort of talk about poetry in general without actually really saying much of consequence. I'm going to read some more of this 1973 edition of The Penguin Book of Love Poetry and enjoy having a lazy Saturday night.

Arvon

On Saturday I spent more than 9 hours travelling from the depths of Shropshire back to Ipswich. I got stuck with Richard in Birmingham New Street for like, two hours, my phone ran out of battery, I ended up at Ely station, realising only after about twenty minutes that there wasn't another train to Ipswich for more than an hour and a half. I stumbled into the phone booth, called home and got my Dad to pick me up by sobbing (I totally hadn't meant to cry, I'm such a loser). The journey was hell, and once I was by myself it was just boring boring boring. But you know what? It was worth every second, and would have been worth many more.

I was travelling back from an Arvon course, which had been incredible. Somehow, it was my third - I've been on two others, all three through (somehow) winning fyp a number of times. I don't know if I'll ever get to go on any more - I mean, hopefully I will, but I can't really afford any and it wouldn't be the same anyway. The fyp ones are always so incredible because everyone's about your age and you're thrown together and they turn out to be awesome so you end up with great friends that happen to be into poetry. Sigh. Obviously I was incredibly lucky to win as many times as I did - 3 - so I've had way more than my fair share of being an idiot at the Hurst, but still, I'm sad that that was my last time.

I think I was going to regail stories about the course here, actually, but I don't really know what to say. I don't think it'd be all that interesting to people that weren't there, although I do urge all of you to play Adverbs the next time you're at a party. It's magic. Try 'sadistically' or 'morbidly' if you really want to have a good time...

Anyway this blog post is a bit nothing but I largely wanted to let you all know that I am alive, if not well then passable and that last week was one of the best weeks of my life (along with the other two courses, naturally). A proper, thoughtful blog post coming soon - promise!

Block

I haven't been writing much recently. At first I thought it was because of exams, but then my exams finished and... I still haven't been writing much. And I don't just mean poetry - I mean blog posts, as well, although I managed to write a list for Sugar & Noise. Lists aren't really all that inspiring, though (I do like them).

I don't know if I really agree with the concept of writers' block or whatever, it seems such a pretentious thing, claimed by people that like posing more than actually writing. In a way I think it must exist, though, although with me it's not so much that I couldn't write as that I just had no ideas at all. At all. The only thing I've sort of wondered about writing about is weather and the environment, which is nice but not something that can be handled lightly or too heavily. I wrote a slightly flippant poem that's sort of about it (but not really) and I'm hoping to do something else... but it's just so vast!

I'm really currently trying to write something for Christopher Tower. Why? Well, partly because I quite like working from prompts sometimes, and also because the prize is massive and something that I could really do with for university. This prompt is infuriating me, though; it's Change. What can you do for that? Surely it covers everything?! It's as if it's too broad. I had the same problem with Flight last year, although at least I managed something for it in the end, something that managed to be one of the final 40 according to a letter I got from the people afterwards. In 2006 I was one of the three runners up, though, and I got a prize and I got to go to the awards and everything. The theme was A Building, which I remember a lot of people moaning about or saying was too narrow. I thought it was pretty good, though, as there's less to do, less choice. I guess it's just now I'm faced with an almost blank template I just have no idea where to even start. But after posting this I'm going to watch Torchwood for 50 minutes, then hammer away at wordpad until I have at least the start of something. I've been languishing in a slightly pathetic way for a bit too long.

iRead?

Earlier today I was reading an old Guardian blog about Amazon's bookreader toy, the Kindle. There seem to be mixed feelings about it - some people say that there's no way it will ever replace paper books, what nonsense, blah blah blah. Some people say that it's inevitable and no matter how long we hold out it will eventually take over, just like the iPod has sort of taken over from CDs and CDs took over from records and tapes and so on, and that basically once they get a reader on the market that's actually really usable and affordable (the Kindle is not that reader) then books will become obsolete.

I can sort of see both sides. On the one hand, I fucking love books and don't know how I'd do without them. I have so many books in my room that without them it'd just be weird. I work in a bookshop. I think that it's a great idea to reserve books on my library's website at 2AM in the morning so that I get a nice surprise when it becomes available in a few day's time. I have stacks of books on my bedside table and I like flicking through them and deciding what to read before bed.

Essentially, that's all bullshit and shouldn't really affect how I view this whole reader thing. It's sentimental and based on history and me looking backwards. I have all of these books so I can't imagine a future without books. But while the more sentimental parts should be ignored (and the fact that I work in a bookshop shouldn't really have been mentioned) it doesn't change the fact that I'm not the only person that has this sort of weird thing about books. There are people that collect records and are still devoted to mixtapes, CDs, mix CDs. There are people that still pine after the long-gone flexidisc format (I have a flexidisc somewhere. They're weird) and there are people that like 78s (gramophone records) even though as far as I'm aware 78s haven't been in use for quite a long time. What I'm trying to say is, if these formats, none of which were around for that long before they became outmoded (the gramophone record seems to have originated in the 1890s, the rest came after) still have their loyalists, then what about the book?

Books are different. They are not as easily replaced or changed as audio formats, and the improvements made to them tend not to really affect the literature contained within. Sure, they have to be readable and it's nice if they don't fall apart after one read, but they're not like records or CDs because the format there is more crucial, as the texture and speed and overall sound of the end product will be different depending on which physical or even digital format you are dealing with. Sure, yeah, there was the mass-market paperback revolution of the 1930s, but it's not really the same. The rise of the paperback may have changed the publishing industry forever, allowing books to become a more affordable commodity, but what difference did it make to the consumer once they'd paid for their books and had taken them home to read? They were more convenient and portable, like the iPod, but the art was not changed or made any more accessible. Digital formats have been promised to give us clearer sound quality, and while it might be nice to be able to listen to that Joy Division song fifty times in a row without surface noise (although, as John Peel famously said, "Listen, mate, life has surface noise"), that difference is simply not there with books and digital readers.

Because, you see, sound is ultimately affected by very tiny things. I don't know about you, but then I read it isn't really. I may be a bit of a loser and prefer certain types of paper or certain types of book to others, but I don't think that it makes any difference in the long run to whether I find myself enjoying the finer points of Lyrical Ballads or not.

I mean, I'm sure this is a pretty obvious point, but it's not one I've often seen being made. Digital audio has the potential to actually change how people enjoy an art form, to make it clearer and more portable at the same time. Books are already portable and not as delicate as CDs and minidiscs, immediate predecessors of the iPod. The kindle does not, as far as I'm aware, suddenly make Ulysses a lot clearer, and nor is the crisp white screen going to suddenly make me understand what the hell that whole Shantih thing was about.

Digital readers may offer accessibility to numerous books at any time, but I'm not sure I necessarily want or need to be able to access every book that I own when I'm on the train or catching a bus into school, which is generally when I take one or two books with me. I don't have the longest attention span anyway, and so leaving me with no choice is a good way to get me to finish something. Digital readers can probably crash and lose data; they are too fragile for my purposes. What about books with illustrations? What about books such as Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close that use typographical effects and colour illustrations (the Kindle, for example, boasts a monochrome screen)? What about children's books, pop-up books, concertina books, books in non-standard binding and books that have sections for you to write in, such as 1000 Places to See Before You Die and its checklist that you're supposed to tick off?

Books have been around for millenna. I'm not saying that digital readers don't have a future, because that would be stupid and if anyone read this then I'd be embarrassed. Obviously I don't know what the future holds for the book, and in fifty years I could have burnt all of mine and be a delighted advocate of Ebooks and portable readers. It's just, I can't see it happening; you can write notes in books, fold corners, lend them to friends and sit on them. You can browse them in bookshops and ask the friendly booksellers' advice. Sure, it sucks when you can't get hold of something - and I suppose digital readers are attempting to make a wider range of publications available to those that own them - but how amazing does it feel when you finally track down that out-of-print poetry volume that you had to buy from a second hand bookshop all the way over in deepest Connecticut?

I don't think that books are going to be obsolete any time soon. They're too versatile and sturdy for that, too convenient, and we're too used to them. But digital readers are going to have their place, and once they become a) affordable, b)not fugly, c)more convenient (so they'll need very little charging and better network coverage, etc.) then it'll be interesting to see where they go. The fact is, though, there will not be a digital book revolution. It's going to be slower than that. Don't forget that the iPod is essentially a youth thing (I'm sure you can't forget, what with it being the number one item to namecheck if you want to seem like you have your fingers vaguely near the pulse, never mind that all the coolest young things abandoned Apple for some obscure brand ages ago) and popular music has always been so; literature is not, and never will be, predominantly youth-dominated. Poets and novelists can be called young in their thirties and forties, by which age you're practically dead if you want to make popular music.

What I'm trying to say (in the longest and most boring way possible) is that due to demographics, history and the very nature of the art forms concerned, it's not wise to compare the digital music revolution to a theoretical revolution in the publishing industry. Publishers need to look to the internet more, I'm not disputing that, but they need to explore different methods and not use iTunes and Apple as a model for what they need to do to adapt to this strange new digital world.

Hello again

I'm not very good at this whole blogging thing, am I? I never seem to update and then when I do it's like, here, have far too much in one go.

Since I last wrote some things have happened, some good, some bad. I've got a place at two universities and I've got an interview at a third next month. I'm pretty sure which will be my firm but I'm still trying to decide on an insurance (obviously this will be easier when my other three have said whether they're making me an offer or rejecting me). It's exciting, though, and I really can't wait for October now. I really love one of the places that has made me an offer and now I'm terrified of missing it, but hopefully I won't. I should probably start revising for my January exams. Eek.

I've been working a lot (well, by a lot, I mean every Sunday and three days in a row this weekend, but it felt pretty intense at the time) and I'm a bit sad about my job ending in a couple of weeks, but I guess I'll get over it. It'll be nice to have two days off a week, but I'll miss it. I'll also miss my amazing new discount card which I actually haven't used yet (I only got in on Saturday) but I will be using this weekend or tomorrow.

Christmas was pretty lovely, I got a lot of books and some DVDs and some other things. I've already read two of the books, one An Abundance of Katherines by John Green and the other the novelisation of the movie Enchanted (which I haven't seen yet). I'm excited about an anthology of poetic forms that I got and a book of John Donne, amongst others, and it's just all very exciting. I do love books. I'm currently watching a DVD of Aanastasia (much to the dismay of my mother, as it's gone 1am and so this probably seems like quite an indecent hour to be watching a cartoon) and I'm probably going to watch Clueless tomorrow. I love Clueless, it's such a perfect film.

I haven't been writing much recently, which is annoying; I've had a lot of stress over the past month or so, what with two university interviews, a few essay crises and then the wait for a letter from a university, but now that it's the holidays and I don't have work until Saturday and Sunday and then I have another almost-week after that (I go back next Friday, and yes, that's a mystery to me as well) it's a bit strange. I'm definitely going to take advantage of my free time and try and write something as well as do some reading and some revision.

I went to a poetry reading a week ago today (well actually a week ago yesterday, Wednesday the 19th, because it's gone midnight) at the poetry cafe, one of the New Blood series. It was very excellent, Richard O'Brien was doing a slot and then a couple of other people did them too and I managed to snag an open mic slot. I got asked to do my own slot at a New Blood in the future which is exciting, and I'll post about it here when a date is chosen/it gets nearer, although I suspect anyone that reads this blog already knows me and will probably hear me going on about it a lot anyway.

I should probably stop writing now as I don't think I have anything else to say. But here's a poem that I love, by Frank O'Hara:

Poem (Lana Turner has collapsed!)

Lana Turner has collapsed!
I was trotting along and suddenly
it started raining and snowing
and you said it was hailing
but hailing hits you on the head
hard so it was really snowing and
raining and I was in such a hurry
to meet you but the traffic
was acting exactly like the sky
and suddenly I see a headline
LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED!
there is no snow in Hollywood
there is no rain in California
I have been to lots of parties
and acted perfectly disgraceful
but I never actually collapsed
oh Lana Turner we love you get up

Death by Stuff

After doing pretty much nothing for the whole of the holidays, these last couple of months have been something of a shock to the system. I've sent off my UCAS form and everything (a week and a half ago now!) and I have not yet heard anything from anyone other than UCAS themselves (their letter came REALLY fast, considering). I'm not particularly worried though, I guess the universities I have applied to just don't do the whole confirmation of application thing. As long as I get in somewhere by next May or whenever the deadline for responses is then I'll be happy.

Now that personal statementing and worrying about my UCAS form is on the backburner a bit, I am free to be busy with other things. I've been working in a bookshop for the last month and a bit, and it's fun, if hectic etc. Today I read a bit of The Divine Comedy, and I want to buy it. I probably will at some point. But yeah, I'm also busy with school, of course - I'm doing four A Levels. I haven't exactly been swamped with work yet, though, but I do have a number of essays due in at various points next week and I also have various things to do for art. I got a new camera for my birthday, which is exciting.

Oh yeah, my birthday! I turned eighteen exactly a week ago today, which was both great and awful. The birthday part was great, of course - I got some awesome presents and cards and I went for an ace meal with my friends, but the turning eighteen part... I'm not sure. I don't want to be an adult. I like it, in a way, but it's like - where's the fun, now? Getting into gigs underage was always amazing, now that I'm old enough to go to any I want to? I dunno. It'll be less annoying when I get IDed, anyway.

This last few weeks have been very poetry-orientated. I went to the FYP awards (of which I have already blogged, o readers) and then on Tuesday I went to Buckingham Palace. BUCKINGHAM PALACE. It was very strange. I don't really have much to say about it - it was nice meeting so many people and all that, but it was all a bit of a whirlwind - I mean, it was over by half one. After that we poetry-cafed and then Emily Middleton and I went to Foyles in London. I have been spending far too much time in bookshops lately, but I don't mind - I LOVE bookshops. And the poetry section in that shop is awesome.

Talking of poetry, I have been reading Luke Kennard's collections a lot recently, and I would just like to state, for the record, that they are amazing. They're so other, if that makes any sense - they're funny and political and just so sharp, not a single word in any of his poems seem to have been wasted. I read The Harbour Beyond the Movie before reading The Solex Borthers, but they're both wonderful, and I recommend them really, really highly. I just wish he'd won the Forward, sigh.

For my birthday, among other books, I got Frank O'Hara's collected (!!), David Morley's creative writing book and some money with which I bought a hefty anthology of Central / Eastern European poetry in it. I've been reading a lot of stuff in translation recently, I'm still reading The Master and Margarita (awesome) and I have various books of russian poetry and Romanian poetry lying around. I'm learning Russian at the moment actually, it's great, even if I'm a bit slow.

I'm off to do something else now, this is far too long. I'm doing an open mic night in Cambridge on Tuesday, wooh! Exciting stuff.

Yesterday the winners of the Foyle Young Poets 2007 were announced. I'm in the top fifteen again, and I guess I can officially post about it now. It's my third year in the top fifteen (I was top 100 the year before that) and as it was the last year I could enter it's quite nice to end it on top, or something.

The awards ceremony was in the evening, and it was lovely. I left school at about lunchtime (after a slightly bizarre session with an Oxford outreach officer in the careers office) and caught buses home, got changed as soon as possible and then dashed back in to catch the half two train to London Liverpool Street. I was wearing a dress and some very sequinned gold shoes, and if any photos exist of me that aren't completely hideous then I'll possibly put one up here to demonstrate. Don't hold your breath, though, I am recovering from a cold and I am not very photogenic.

You'd think that as this was my fourth FYP awards thing (well, fifth, really, as there were two events in 2005) I'd be used to it by now. I'm really, really not - I was still ultra-nervous and probably very annoying. I did talk to a lot of people, and I drank too much of this weird ginger and elderberry drink and I didn't eat much at all (although I did accidentally insult the food while someone was trying to give us caviar or something, so that was embarrassing). The worst part was when we were sitting down and our poems were being read out and my eyes suddenly started being like OH MY GOD THE PAIN ETC so I was trying to like, stop them hurting while crying with laughter at a man reading out Annie's poem, which you should all read here (you should read all the rest while you're there, although I'm not going to force you to read my rather twee effort) and it was a bit of a crisis. But then my eyes stopped hurting and it was okay again.

I was also interviewed for a podcast by Tom Chivers of penned in the margins, which was a bit weird, as I'd never been interviewed before. It was nice, though, I think I went went on about books a lot. When the podcast surfaces I'll try and remember to post a link here, if anyone's interested.

Anyway, then it was onto networking. I haven't posted about pomegranate here yet, which is utterly shameful, and I think that everyone should go there NOW and read everything (although again, feel free to miss out my poem there too, it's really twee again, sigh!), but we handed out lots of flyers for it and told people to read it and submit to us, like, NOW, so hopefully we'll hear from a few new voices and stuff. If you're reading this and you somehow haven't yet been and marvelled at Pomegranate, then where have you been?! Go there now, anyway.

I was a bit sad about coming home again. Rosie and I sat on the train and moaned about Ipswich - it's not a very exciting place ever, really, and especially not if you want to be involved in poetry. There are never any poetry readings here anymore (PoetryIpswich mysteriously died, not that it was very exciting anyway) and I can hardly ever get to them in London (I've been to ONE, and that was ages ago) and much as I love Waterstone's (I work there and it's awesome) it doesn't have any poetry magazines other then Poetry Review and so I can never get Magma or Smiths Knoll (?! I can never find it ANYWHERE, and it's based in Suffolk! What is going on?!) and all the poetry reading groups in Suffolk are ages away and full of old people and I can't get there anyway. When you look up Suffolk on poetry websites for listings or whatever, Ipswich usually isn't on there. It's all Aldeburgh and Felixstowe and Bury St. Edmunds, which are nice places but they're all posher than Ipswich and it's not plausible for me to get to them for events in the evening, as I can't drive and the buses here are particularly rubbish. So Ipswich, poetry-wise? It's dead.

It's dead for pretty much everything else too, as there are no alternative nights (oh I think there might be one actually, but it's very late and I have school / work and god I hate being young sometimes) and there's only one cinema and there are no second-hand bookshops (although obviously Waterstone's has everything anyone needs) and the Wolsey Theatre is nice but small and the library has a patchy selection of books and ugh.

In just under a year I'll be out of here, I hope.

On a less whingey note - I read Luke Kennard's The Harbour Beyond the Movie cover to cover today, after flicking through it last week. It's completely amazing, original and sharp and beautiful and also really really funny in a really strange way. I'm really gutted that it didn't win the Forward. When I get paid, I think I'll have to buy his first collection!

Oh dear

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.

So, just now I got reminded of this thing by Emily asking me for a list of poetry blogs. I was happy to oblige, but then a little sad that I'd never really done anything much with this. So, anyway.

So, today my Mum picked up two books for me from the local library. One of them is The New York Poets II (edited by Mark Ford and Trevor Winkfield), and the other is Making for Planet Alice (edited by Maura Dooley). I'm a big fan of Maura Dooley (which is probably the reason I got the book out - I'm still working my way through 'Modern Women Poets', a more extensive Bloodaxe anthology of, well, women poets) and it looks pretty good so far. I haven't really looked at the New York one yet - I had the first one out for a while, but never really worked my way through it. I'm a big fan of Frank O'Hara, so I feel like I need to research more into the poets working at around the same time as him, and those that took up the gauntlet after he'd gone. The problem is that I'm really supposed to be buckling down to work now (I have a three hour English exam in just over a week) and so I don't really have time to read; anthologies are pretty good at this sort of time, because they don't require you to work all the way through, but frustrating - I want to work all the way through, really, but I can't.

Still, soon enough all of my exams will be over. I think my last one's on the 12th and 13th (or is it the 11th and 12th?) of June, and that's Art. Then I'm done with AS, done, done. And I do three days on either Arabic or Russian (don't know which of the two language courses I got onto yet) before being launched into the murky waters of A2 English Lit, History and Government and Politics. I'll probably have to continue Art until the summer holidays, actually, but I can't really see me carrying it on after then - to be honest, I'm not really good enough at it. If I want to apply to some good universities then I need to focus more on getting As in my other subjects, not on getting at least a B in art at the expense of my main three.

Anyway, I'm trying to think of a poem to sign this off with - the problem with being a big fan of modern poetry is that it's all in copyright! So I'll leave off a poem for today, but I'll try and post something in the next few days.

Maybe I'll give this a try

I actually quite like blogger - the problem with LJs is that they're really for having a good moan, that sort of thing. I think I'll use this as more of a poetry blog; I can write about competitions & submissions, as well as do my own mini-reviews. I would write a nice long post now, actually, but I have a history essay to do. So, instead, have some Rupert Brooke:

The Hill

Breathless, we flung us on the windy hill,
Laughed in the sun, and kissed the lovely grass.
You said, "Through glory and ecstasy we pass;
Wind, sun, and earth remain, the birds sing still,
When we are old, are old. . . ." "And when we die
All's over that is ours; and life burns on
Through other lovers, other lips," said I,
-- "Heart of my heart, our heaven is now, is won!"

"We are Earth's best, that learnt her lesson here.
Life is our cry. We have kept the faith!" we said;
"We shall go down with unreluctant tread
Rose-crowned into the darkness!" . . . Proud we were,
And laughed, that had such brave true things to say.
-- And then you suddenly cried, and turned away.

I'm not going to use this

for some reason, i was half-registered here?? anyway, i finished the registration, but i already have a livejournal at http://by_motorways.livejournal.com, and i like the whole social-blogging thing a bit too much to give up livejournal. might have a poke around at the blogosphere here, though. huzzah.

not really sure who'll read this, but if you were angry that you didn't get the lovely subdomain that i managed to get, then sorry.